The Kosovo Liberation Army: Does Clinton Policy Support Group with Terror, Drug Ties?

March 31, 1999

The Kosovo Liberation Army: Does Clinton Policy Support Group with Terror, Drug Ties?
From ‚Terrorists‘ to ‚Partners‘

On March 24, 1999, NATO initiated air attacks on Yugoslavia (a federation of two republics, Serbia and Montenegro) in order to impose a peace agreement in the Serbian province of Kosovo, which has an ethnic Albanian majority. The Clinton Administration has not formally withdrawn its standing insistence that Belgrade sign the peace agreement, which would entail the deployment in Kosovo of some 28,000 NATO ground troops — including 4,000 Americans — to police the settlement. But in recent days the Clinton public line has shifted to a demand that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic halt the offensive he has launched in Kosovo, which has led to a growing humanitarian crisis in the region, before there can be a stop to the bombing campaign.

One week into the bombing campaign, there is widespread discussion of options for further actions. One option includes forging a closer relationship between the United States and a controversial group, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a group which has been cited in unofficial reports for alleged ties to drug cartels and Islamic terrorist organizations. This paper will examine those allegations in the context of the currently unfolding air campaign.

Results of Week One

The air assault is a product of a Clinton policy, which for months has been directed toward intervention in Kosovo, in either the form of the use of air power or of the introduction of a peacekeeping ground force — or of air power followed by a ground force. [For details on the turbulent history of Kosovo and of the direction of Clinton policy leading to the current air campaign, see: RPC’s „Senate to Vote Today on Preventing Funding of Military Operations in Kosovo: Airstrikes Likely This Week,“ 3/23/99; „Bombing, or Ground Troops — or Both: Clinton Kosovo Intervention Appears Imminent,“ 2/22/99; and „Bosnia II: The Clinton Administration Sets Course for NATO Intervention in Kosovo,“ 8/12/98.] Just hours before the first bombs fell, the Senate voted 58 to 41 (with 38 Republicans voting in the negative) to authorize air and missile strikes against Yugoslavia (S. Con. Res. 21). The Senate then approved by voice vote a second resolution expressing support for members of the U.S. Armed Forces engaged in military operations against Yugoslavia (S. Res. 74).

Prior to the air campaign, the stated goal of Clinton policy, as noted above, was Belgrade’s acceptance of the peace agreement signed by the Kosovo Albanian delegation (which included representatives of the KLA) on March 17. Now, more than a week into the air campaign, that goal appears even more elusive as the NATO attack has rallied Serbian resistance to what they see as an unjustified foreign aggression.

Since the NATO bombing campaign began, Serbian security forces also have intensified an offensive in Kosovo that began as the airstrikes appeared inevitable. According to numerous media reports, tens of thousands of Albanians are fleeing the Serb army, and police forces and paramilitary groups that, based on credible allegations, are committing widespread atrocities, including summary executions, burnings of Albanian villages, and assassination of human rights activists and community leaders. Allied officials have denounced the apparently deliberate forced exodus of Albanian civilians as ethnic cleansing and even genocide. But according to some refugee accounts, the NATO bombing is also a factor in the exodus: „[M]ost residents of the provincial capital say they are leaving of their own accord and are not being forced out at gunpoint, as residents of several western cities and villages in Kosovo say has been happening to them. . . . Pristina residents who made it to Macedonia said their city is still largely intact, despite the targeting of ethnic Albanian businesses by Serbian gangs and several direct hits from NATO air strikes in the city center“ [„Cause of Kosovar Exodus from Pristina Disputed: Serbs Are Forcing Exit, Some Claim; Others Go on Own,“ Washington Times, 3/31/99].

At the same time, the Clinton Administration, consistent with its track record on Kosovo, has ignored credible but unconfirmed evidence from sources not connected to Milosevic’s Serbian government that the NATO campaign has resulted in far more civilian damage than has been acknowledged.

Making Things Worse?

The Clinton Administration and NATO officials flatly reject any suggestion that their policy has exacerbated an already bad situation on the ground in Kosovo. With neighboring Albania and Macedonia in danger of being destabilized by a flood of refugees, questions are being raised about NATO’s ability to continue the campaign unless positive results are evident soon:

„With critics arguing that the NATO campaign has made things worse, the alliance must slow the Serbs‘ onslaught or watch public support and alliance unity unravel. U.S. and NATO officials angrily rebutted the critics, arguing that Mr. Milosevic, the Serbian leader, and his forces were already on the rampage before NATO strikes began.“ [„NATO Is Set to Target Sites in Belgrade,“ Wall Street Journal, 3/29/99]

If the immediate NATO goal has now shifted to stopping the Serb offensive in Kosovo, observers point to three likely options [WSJ, 3/29/99]:

„Option One is to continue the air campaign, increasingly targeting Serb frontline troops [in Kosovo], but it could be days before the onslaught is really slowed.“ This option, which NATO has already begun to implement, is likely to entail greater risk to NATO aircraft and crews, due to the lower and slower flightpaths needed to deliver tactical strikes. Still, most observers doubt the offensive can be halted with air power alone. Late reports indicate increased bombing of targets in Belgrade, the capital of both the Yugoslav federation and the Serbian republic.

„Option Two is to start considering intervening on the ground.“ In recent days, the Clinton Administration has begun to shift its position on NATO ground troops from a categorical assurance that ground troops would go in only to police a peace settlement to hints that they might, depending on some unspecified „conditions,“ be introduced into a combat environment. For example, in comments on March 28, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Henry Shelton suggested that certain „assessments“ had been made, but that there was as yet no political agreement on ground troops:

„There have been assessments made, but those assessments were based on varying conditions that existed in Kosovo… At this point in time, there are no plans per se to introduce ground troops.“ [NBC’s „Meet the Press,“ 3/28/99]

„Option Three: arming the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army to carry the war on the ground while NATO continues it from the air.“ This option, which would make NATO the overt air force of the KLA, would also dash any possibility of a solution that would not result in a change in Balkan borders, perhaps setting off a round of widespread regional instability. Clinton Administrations officials have begun to suggest that independence may now be justified in view of the Serb offensive. The KLA has been explicit in its determination to not only achieve an independent Kosovo but to „liberate“ Albanian-inhabited areas of Montenegro (including the Montenegrin capital, Podgorica), Macedonia (including the Macedonian capital, Skopje), and parts of northern Greece; most of these areas were in fact annexed to Albania under Axis occupation during World War II. (For a visual representation of the areas claimed by the KLA, see the map at the website of the pro-KLA Albanian-American Civic League at www.aacl.com

Note that arming and training the KLA, as called for in Option Three, would highlight serious questions about the nature of the KLA and of the Clinton Administration’s relationship with it.

The KLA: from ‚Terrorists‘ to ‚Partners‘

The Kosovo Liberation Army „began on the radical fringe of Kosovar Albanian politics, originally made up of diehard Marxist-Leninists (who were bankrolled in the old days by the Stalinist dictatorship next door in Albania) as well as by descendants of the fascist militias raised by the Italians in World War II“ [„Fog of War — Coping With the Truth About Friend and Foe: Victims Not Quite Innocent,“ New York Times, 3/28/99]. The KLA made its military debut in February 1996 with the bombing of several camps housing Serbian refugees from wars in Croatia and Bosnia [Jane’s Intelligence Review, 10/1/96]. The KLA (again according to the highly regarded Jane’s,) „does not take into consideration the political or economic importance of its victims, nor does it seem at all capable of seriously hurting its enemy, the Serbian police and army. Instead, the group has attacked Serbian police and civilians arbitrarily at their weakest points. It has not come close to challenging the region’s balance of military power“ [Jane’s, 10/1/96].

The group expanded its operations with numerous attacks through 1996 but was given a major boost with the collapse into chaos of neighboring Albania in 1997, which afforded unlimited opportunities for the introduction of arms into Kosovo from adjoining areas of northern Albania, which are effectively out of the control of the Albanian government in Tirana. From its inception, the KLA has targeted not only Serbian security forces, who may be seen as legitimate targets for a guerrilla insurgency, but Serbian and Albanian civilians as well.

In view of such tactics, the Clinton Administration’s then-special envoy for Kosovo, Robert Gelbard, had little difficulty in condemning the KLA (also known by its Albanian initials, UCK) in terms comparable to those he used for Serbian police repression:

“ ‚The violence we have seen growing is incredibly dangerous,‘ Gelbard said. He criticized violence ‚promulgated by the (Serb) police‘ and condemned the actions of an ethnic Albanian underground group Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) which has claimed responsibility for a series of attacks on Serb targets. ‚We condemn very strongly terrorist actions in Kosovo. The UCK is, without any questions, a terrorist group,‘ Gelbard said.“ [Agence France Presse, 2/23/98]

Mr. Gelbard’s remarks came just before a KLA attack on a Serbian police station led to a retaliation that left dozens of Albanians dead, leading in turn to a rapid escalation of the cycle of violence. Responding to criticism that his earlier remarks might have been seen as Washington’s „green light“ to Belgrade that a crack-down on the KLA would be acceptable, Mr. Gelbard offered to clarify to the House Committee on International Relations:

„Questioned by lawmakers today on whether he still considered the group a terrorist organization, Mr. Gelbard said that while it has committed ‚terrorist acts,‘ it has ’not been classified legally by the U.S. Government as a terrorist organization.‘ “ [New York Times, 3/13/98]

The situation in Kosovo has since been transformed: what were once sporadic cases of KLA attacks and often heavy-handed and indiscriminate Serbian responses has now become a full-scale guerrilla war. That development appeared to be a vindication of what may have been the KLA’s strategy of escalating the level of violence to the point where outside intervention would become a distinct possibility. Given the military imbalance, there is reason to believe the KLA — which is now calling for the introduction of NATO ground troops into Kosovo [Associated Press, 3/27/99] — may have always expected to achieve its goals less because of the group’s own prospects for military success than because of a hoped-for outside intervention: As one fighter put it, „We hope that NATO will intervene, like it did in Bosnia, to save us“ [„Both Sides in the Kosovo Conflict Seem Determined to Ignore Reality,“ New York Times, 6/22/98].

By early 1999, the Clinton Administration had completely staked the success of its Kosovo policy on either the acceptance by both sides of a pre-drafted peace agreement that would entail a NATO ground occupation of Kosovo, or, if the Albanians signed the agreement while Belgrade refused, bombing of the Serbs. By committing itself so tightly to those two alternatives, the Clinton Administration left itself with as little flexibility as it had offered the Albanians and the Serbs.

At that point for the Administration, cultivating the goodwill of the KLA — as the most extreme element on the Albanian side, and the element which had the weapons capable of sinking any diplomatic initiative — became an absolute imperative:

„In order to get the Albanians’… acceptance [of the peace plan], Ms. Albright offered incentives intended to show that Washington is a friend of Kosovo…Officers in the Kosovo Liberation Army would . . . be sent to the United States for training in transforming themselves from a guerrilla group into a police force or a political entity, much like the African National Congress did in South Africa.“ [New York Times, 2/24/99]

The Times‘ comparison of treatment of the KLA with that of the African National Congress (ANC) — a group with its own history of terror attacks on political opponents, including members of the ethnic group it claims to represent — is a telling one. In fact, it points to the seemingly consistent Clinton policy of cultivating relationships with groups known for terrorist violence — not only the ANC, but the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) — in what may be a strategy of attempting to wean away a group from its penchant for violence by adopting its cause as an element of U.S. policy.

By the time the NATO airstrikes began, the Clinton Administration’s partnership with the KLA was unambiguous:

„With ethnic Albanian Kosovars poised to sign a peace accord later Thursday, the United States is moving quickly to help transform the Kosovo Liberation Army from a rag-tag band of guerrilla fighters into a political force. . . . Washington clearly sees it as a main hope for the troubled province’s future. ‚We want to develop a good relationship with them as they transform themselves into a politically-oriented organization,‘ deputy State Department spokesman James Foley said. ‚We want to develop closer and better ties with this organization.‘

„A strong signal of this is the deference with which U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright treats the Kosovar Albanians‘ chief negotiator Hashim Thaci, a 30-year-old KLA commander. Albright dispatched her top aide and spokesman James Rubin to Paris earlier this week to meet with Thaci and personally deliver to him an invitation for members of his delegation to visit the United States. Rubin, who will attend the ceremony at which the Kosovar Albanians will sign the accord, is expected to then return to Washington with five members of the delegation, including Thaci. Thaci and Rubin have developed a ‚good rapport‘ during the Kosovo crisis, according to U.S. officials who note that Thaci was the main delegate they convinced to sign the agreement even though the Serbs have refused to do so. [ . . . ]

…………………………..

„Narcotics smuggling has become a prime source of financing for civil wars already under way — or rapidly brewing — in southern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean, according to a report issued here this week. The report, by the Paris-based Observatoire Geopolitique des Drogues, or Geopolitical Observatory of Drugs, identifies belligerents in the former Yugoslav republics and Turkey as key players in the region’s accelerating drugs-for-arms traffic. Albanian nationalists in ethnically tense Macedonia and the Serbian province of Kosovo have built a vast heroin network, leading from the opium fields of Pakistan to black-market arms dealers in Switzerland, which transports up to $2 billion worth of the drug annually into the heart of Europe, the report says. More than 500 Kosovo or Macedonian Albanians are in prison in Switzerland for drug- or arms-trafficking offenses, and more than 1,000 others are under indictment. The arms are reportedly stockpiled in Kosovo for eventual use against the Serbian government in Belgrade, which imposed a violent crackdown on Albanian autonomy advocates in the province five years ago.“ [„Separatists Supporting Themselves with Traffic in Narcotics,“ San Francisco Chronicle, 6/10/94]

At the same time, many Albanians in the diaspora have made voluntary contributions to the KLA and are offended at suggestions of drug money funding of that organization:

„Nick Ndrejaj, who retired from the real estate business, lives on a pension in Daytona Beach, Fla. But the retiree has managed to scrape up some money to send to the Kosovo Liberation Army, the rebel force that is opposing Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic. ‚It’s hard, but we have had to do this all our lives,‘ says the elderly man. Mr. Ndrejaj is one of many Albanians in America who are sending all they can spare to aid their beleaguered compatriots in central Europe. The disaster in Kosovo is uniting the minority into a major fund-raising and congressional lobbying effort. [ . . . ]

„Typical of the donors is Agim Jusufi, a building superintendent on Manhattan’s West Side. Mr. Jusufi gets a weekly paycheck. He describes himself as an ordinary ‚working man.‘ However, he has donated $5,000 to the KLA. ‚It is always stressed that we should donate when we can,‘ he says, ‚We are in a grave moment, so we are raising money.‘ Jusufi bridles over reports that drug money funds the KLA. There has been an Albanian organized-crime element involved in the drug trade for decades. But, he says, in this country, the money comes from hard-working immigrants. ‚We have canceled checks to prove it,‘ he says. “ [„Pulling Political and Purse Strings,“ Christian Science Monitor, 3/31/99]

Without access to the KLA’s ledgers, it is hard to estimate what part of the group’s funds might come from legitimate sources and what part from drugs. One unnamed intelligence source puts the percentage of drug money in the KLA’s coffers at one-half [„Drugs Money Linked to the Kosovo Rebels,“ The Times (London), 3/24/99]. The following is a sample of the reports linking the KLA to funding by narcotics-smuggling crime organizations:

„The Kosovo Liberation Army, which has won the support of the West for its guerrilla struggle against the heavy armour of the Serbs, is a Marxist-led force funded by dubious sources, including drug money. That is the judgment of senior police officers across Europe. An investigation by The Times has established that police forces in three Western European countries, together with Europol, the European police authority, are separately investigating growing evidence that drug money is funding the KLA’s leap from obscurity to power. The financing of the Kosovo guerrilla war poses critical questions and it sorely tests claims to an ‚ethical‘ foreign policy. Should the West back a guerrilla army that appears to be partly financed by organised crime? Could the KLA’s need for funds be fuelling the heroin trade across Europe? . . . As well as diverting charitable donations from exiled Kosovans, some of the KLA money is thought to come from drug dealing. Sweden is investigating suspicions of a KLA drug connection. ‚We have intelligence leading us to believe that there could be a connection between drug money and the Kosovo Liberation Army,‘ said Walter Kege, head of the drug enforcement unit in the Swedish police intelligence service. Supporting intelligence has come from other states. ‚We have yet to find direct evidence, but our experience tells us that the channels for trading hard drugs are also used for weapons,‘ said one Swiss police commander. . . . One Western intelligence report quoted by Berliner Zeitung says that DM900 million has reached Kosovo since the guerrillas began operations and half the sum is said to be illegal drug money. In particular, European countries are investigating the Albanian connection: whether Kosovan Albanians living primarily in Germany and Switzerland are creaming off the profits from inner-city heroin dealing and sending the cash to the KLA. Albania — which plays a key role in channelling money to the Kosovans — is at the hub of Europe’s drug trade. An intelligence report which was prepared by Germany’s Federal Criminal Agency concluded: ‚Ethnic Albanians are now the most prominent group in the distribution of heroin in Western consumer countries.‘ Europol, which is based in The Hague, is preparing a report for European interior and justice ministers on a connection between the KLA and Albanian drug gangs. Police in the Czech Republic recently tracked down a Kosovo Albanian drug dealer named Doboshi who had escaped from a Norwegian prison where he was serving 12 years for heroin trading. A raid on Doboshi’s apartment turned up documents linking him with arms purchases for the KLA.“ [„Drugs Money Linked to the Kosovo Rebels,“ The Times (London), 3/24/99]

„Western intelligence agencies believe the UCK [KLA] has been re-arming with the aid of money from drug-smuggling through Albania, along with donations from the Albanian diaspora in Western Europe and North America. . . . Albania has become the crime capital of Europe. The most powerful groups in the country are organized criminals who use Albania to grow, process, and store a large percentage of the illegal drugs destined for Western Europe. . . . Albania’s criminal gangs are actively supporting the war in Kosovo. Many of them have family links to Albanian groups in Kosovo and support them with arms and other supplies, either out of family solidarity or solely for profit. These links mean the UCK fighters have a secure base area and reasonably good lines of communiction to the outside world. Serb troops have tried to seal the border but with little success.“ [„Life in the Balkan ‚Tinderbox‘ Remains as Dangerous as Ever,“ Jane’s Intelligence Review, 3/1/99]

………………..

„Serbian officials say Mujahideen have formed groups that remained behind in Bosnia. Groups from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Chechnya are also involved in Albanian guerrilla operations. A document found on the body of Alija Rabic, an Albanian UCK member killed in a border crossing incident last July, indicated he was guiding a 50-man group from Albania into Kosovo. The group included one Yemeni and 16 Saudis, six of whom bore passports with Macedonian Albanian names. Other UCK rebels killed crossing the Albanian frontier have carried Bosnian Muslim Federation papers.“ [Jane’s International Defense Review, „Unhealthy Climate in Kosovo as Guerrillas Gear Up for a Summer Confrontation,“ 2/1/99]

„Mujahidin fighters have joined the Kosovo Liberation Army, dimming prospects of a peaceful solution to the conflict and fuelling fears of heightened violence next spring.. . . . Their arrival in Kosovo may force Washington to review its policy in the Serbian province and will deepen Western dismay with the KLA and its tactics. . . . ‚Captain Dula‘, the local KLA commander, was clearly embarrassed at the unexpected presence of foreign journalists and said that he had little idea who was sending the Mujahidin or where they came from; only that it was neither Kosovo nor Albania. ‚I’ve got no information about them,‘ Captain Dula said. ‚We don’t talk about it.‘ . . . American diplomats in the region, especially Robert Gelbard, the special envoy, have often expressed fears of an Islamic hardline infiltration into the Kosovo independence movement. . . . American intelligence has raised the possibility of a link between Osama bin Laden, the Saudi expatriate blamed for the bombing in August of US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, and the KLA. Several of Bin Laden’s supporters were arrested in Tirana, the Albanian capital, and deported this summer, and the chaotic conditions in the country have allowed Muslim extremists to settle there, often under the guise of humanitarian workers. . . . ‚I interviewed one guy from Saudi Arabia who said that it was his eighth jihad,‘ a Dutch journalist said.“ [„U.S. Alarmed as Mujahidin Join Kosovo Rebels,“ The Times (London), 11/26/98]

„Diplomats in the region say Bosnia was the first bastion of Islamic power. The autonomous Yugoslav region of Kosovo promises to be the second. During the current rebellion against the Yugoslav army, the ethnic Albanians in the province, most of whom are Moslem, have been provided with financial and military support from Islamic countries. They are being bolstered by hundreds of Iranian fighters, or Mujahadeen, who infiltrate from nearby Albania and call themselves the Kosovo Liberation Army. US defense officials say the support includes that of Osama Bin Laden, the Saudi terrorist accused of masterminding the bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. A Defense Department statement on August 20 said Bin Laden’s Al Qa’ida organization supports Moslem fighters in both Bosnia and Kosovo. . . . The KLA strength was not the southern Kosovo region, which over the centuries turned from a majority of Serbs to ethnic Albanians. The KLA, however, was strong in neighboring Albania, which today has virtually no central government. The crisis in Albania led Iran to quickly move in to fill the vacuum. Iranian Revolutionary Guards began to train KLA members. . . . Selected groups of Albanians were sent to Iran to study that country’s version of militant Islam. So far, Yugoslav officials and Western diplomats agree that millions of dollars have been funnelled through Bosnia and Albania to buy arms for the KLA. The money is raised from both Islamic governments and from Islamic communities in Western Europe, particularly Germany. . . . ‚Iran has been active in helping out the Kosovo rebels,‘ Ephraim Kam, deputy director of Tel Aviv University’s Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, said. ‚Iran sees Kosovo and Albania as containing Moslem communities that require help and Teheran is willing to do it.‘ But much of the training of the KLA remains based in Bosnia. Intelligence sources say mercenaries and volunteers for the separatist movement have been recruited and paid handsome salaries. . . . The trainers and fighters in the KLA include many of the Iranians who fought in Bosnia in the early 1990s. Intelligence sources place their number at 7,000, many of whom have married Bosnian women. There are also Afghans, Algerians, Chechens, and Egyptians.“ [„Kosovo Seen as New Islamic Bastion,“ Jerusalem Post, 9/14/98]

„. . . By late 1997, the Tehran-sponsored training and preparations of the Liberation Army of Kosovo (UCK — Ushtria Clirimtare e Kosoves — in Albanian, OVK in Serbian), as well as the transfer of weapons and experts via Albania, were being increased. ……………. [„Italy Becomes Iran’s New Base for Terrorist Operations,“ by Yossef Bodansky, Defense and Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy (London), February 1998. Bodansky is Director of the House Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare. This report was written in late 1997, before the KLA’s offensive in early 1998.]

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http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/fr033199.htm

CIA Operations „ROOTS“

Reagan’s NSDD 133 (1984) “Secret and Sensitive”

15 YEARS OF THE ALBANIAN AMERICAN CIVIC LEAGUE

November 1988. DioGuardi with President Regan, Congressman Rinaldo and National Security Adviser Poindexter in the Oval Office discussing U.S. foreign policy in Balkans.

aus der Mafia Website AACL

There is evidence that the US administration in liason with its allies took the decision in the early 1980s to destabilise and dismantle Yugoslavia.

The decsion to destroy Yugoslavia as a country and carve it up into a number of small proxy states was taken by the Reagan adminstration in the early 1980s.

NATO’s Reign of Terror in Kosovo

By Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, February 25, 2008

The following text was written in the immediate wake of the 1999 NATO bombings of Yugoslavia and the invasion of Kosovo by NATO troops.

It is now well established that the war was waged on a fabricated humanitarian pretext and that extensive war crimes were committed by NATO and the US.

Reagan’s NSDD 133 (1984) “Secret and Sensitive”

There is evidence that the US administration in liason with its allies took the decision in the early 1980s to destabilise and dismantle Yugoslavia.

aus dem Balkanblog

03. Dezember 2006

Schrift:
WEISSE QAIDA IN BOSNIEN
“Mit Motorsägen zerstückeln”

“Kein General durfte uns Befehle erteilen”, berichtet der ehemalige Qaida-Aktivist Ali Hamad über seine Zeit als Kommandeur einer Mudschahidin-Einheit im Bosnien-Krieg. Im Interview mit SPIEGEL ONLINE warnt der frühere Terrorist vor einem “Schläfer”-Netzwerk auf dem Balkan.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Sie haben im Bosnien-Krieg als Kommandant einer Qaida-Einheit gekämpft, im Auftrag Bin Ladens. Heute bezeichnen Sie sich als dessen erbittertster Feind. Weshalb haben Sie dem Terrorismus abgeschworen?

Ali Hamad: “Hauptsache, Hunderte Feinde mit in den Tod gerissen”

Renate Flottau / DER SPIEGEL

Ali Hamad: “Hauptsache, Hunderte Feinde mit in den Tod gerissen”
Hamad: Ich wurde mit 17 Jahren von Qaida-Offizieren in Bahrein angeworben. Meine Familie hatte mich verstoßen, und mir war jede Hilfe willkommen, die Unterkunft und Brot versprach. Nach 13-monatiger Ausbildung Anfang der neunziger Jahre in einer Militärschule von al-Qaida in Afghanistan wurde ich Soldat einer Kampfeinheit Bin Ladens. Er überzeugte mich, dass wir einen Heiligen Kampf für den Islam führen, der von den Juden und vom Christentum angegriffen werde.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Selbstmordattentate inklusive?

Hamad: Die Vorträge in Afghanistan hatten auf mich wie eine Gehirnwäsche gewirkt. Ich hätte mich durchaus kaltblütig und mit Sprengstoff verkabelt an einem belebten Platz in irgendeiner Stadt der Welt in die Luft gesprengt. Hauptsache, ich hätte damit Hunderte unserer Feinde mit in den Tod gerissen.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Sie hätten keinerlei Skrupel gehabt, das eigene Leben zu opfern?

Hamad: Wer sieht, dass andere Mitkämpfer ohne Zögern in den Tod rennen, der wird ihnen blind folgen. Unsere Lehrer überzeugten uns, dass der Tod schmerzlos ist – man spüre ihn allenfalls wie den Stich einer Nadel. Wer einen Juden oder Christen töte, sagten sie, würde nur seinen sichtbaren Körper mit einem unsichtbaren tauschen.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: In den acht Jahren Gefängnis, die Sie bereits im bosnischen Zenica sitzen, schrieben Sie ein Buch über al-Qaida. Darin geht es vor allem um deren Mission im Bosnienkrieg……………………………

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Bosnien will Mitglied der EU werden. Muss al-Qaida da nicht eher fürchten, dass man verdächtige Mudschahidin der CIA aushändigt?

Hamad: In der jetzigen bosnischen Führung befinden sich Leute, die unsere Ankunft seinerzeit sehr begrüßten. Außerdem kämpften in unserer Einheit auch 400 einheimische, bosnische Mudschahidin, die die Terrormethoden der al-Qaida teilten. Heute zählen etwa 800 Bosnier zur sogenannten “Weißen Qaida” – Terroristen mit weißem Teint. Ihre Anwerbung wird durch die Wirtschaftskrise erleichtert. Sie sollen später helfen, das Qaida-Netzwerk in Europa auszuweiten.

Das Interview führte Renate Flottau

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,451729,00.html

Einige verbrecherische MPRI Militärs im Balkan:

Brigadier Gen. Michael Hayden (left, with glasses), US Marine Corps Gen. David Mize (front and center), and US Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Edward Hanlon Jr. (behind Mize) in Gornji Vakuf, Bosnia, on September 4, 1994. [Source: Paul Harris] (click image to enlarge)

Und hier die Folgen der Deutschen Politik:

Bosnia Expels former Al-Qaida Fighter

info balkanblog.org

Verschlagwortet: cia operations "Roots", Kosovo terrorist uck kla bill clinton iran albania albanien

Posted in: Geschichte und Kultur