KOSOVO

LIES, LIES, AND MORE LIES

ACCORDING to the Clinton Administration, US military intervention in Kosovo was necessary to bring an end to the protracted civil war there, to smash Milosevic's "genocidal" onslaught on the ethnic Albanians (read Muslims), to prevent a "humanitarian crisis" and to prevent the conflict from spreading to Macedonia, Albania, Greece and perhaps even Turkey.

In the event, far from alleviating the suffering of the Kosovars, NATO's intervention, badly planned, badly executed, has triggered Europe's biggest humanitarian disaster since WW2. Far from preventing the conflict from spreading, there are now very real fears that it could spread into the European heartland and conceivably provoke the third world war of this century.

Many people are suspicious both about the conduct and the US motivation behind this war. As well they might be. All wars are hedged about by black or covert propaganda, disinformation, lies, half lies,, psychological manipulation and influence techniques. Kosovo is no exception. There are many aspects here where the Western lib/left media chooses to be reticent: with good cause.

Chief beneficiary of the US military intervention is the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the client on behalf of whom the NATO bombs are being dropped. Here we have information omission on the grand scale. Although there is widespread official and media silence on this, there is ample evidence - not least from the good, grey London Times - that the KLA is Marxist/Maoist in its ideological stance, that it has itself been guilty of serious acts of terrorism, above all, that it is tightly connected to the notorious Albanian mafia, that much of its funding is derived from the drug trade, that it is seriously involved in all aspects of the vice industry.

In other words, that the NATO bombs are in support of narco-terrorists. To its great credit, The Times blew the gaff at the very time that NATO began its aerial bombing towards the end of March. In a lead article headlined "Drug Money Linked to Kosovo Rebels," it reported: "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 judgement 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 Times acknowledges that much of the funding of the KLA is believed to be raised legitimately by its political wing, the People's Movement of Kosovo, from Albanians living in Western Europe, but it points out that a fundraiser in southern Germany, attended by some 200 Kosovo Albanians, raised US $55,000. This, it said, was a huge sum for "ordinary Kosovans" and fuelled speculation that legitimate fundraising activities were being used to launder dirty money. It said that the Berliner Zeitung has quoted an intelligence report saying that $500 million had reached Kosovo since the KLA began operating there. Half of this was said to be illegal drug money.

Albania is "at the hub of Europe's drug trade," The Times added, quoting an intelligence report by Germany's Federal Criminal Agency as saying, "Ethnic Albanians are now the most prominent group in the distribution of heroin in Western consumer countries."

It then quoted German police sources as pointing out that the Albanians' "sudden ascendancy in the heroin trade in Switzerland, Germany and Scandinavia coincides with the sudden growth of KLA from a 'ragamuffin peasant' army two years ago to a 30 000-strong force equipped with grenade launchers, anti-tank weapons and AK47's." Europol "is preparing a report on the connection between the KLA and Albanian gangs for European interior and justice ministers."

Much the same message came in a cover story written by William Norman Grigg and published last year in the centrist political journal, The New American. Grigg quoted a 1994 report compiled by France's Observatire Geopolitique Des Drogues. This stated that "heroin shipment and marketing networks are taking root among ethnic Albanian communities in Albania. Macedonia and the Kosovo province of Serbia, in order to finance large purchases of weapons destined not only for the current conflict in Bosnia but also for the brewing war in Kosovo."

Grigg writes, "US soldiers called upon to enforce a 'peace' accord that turns Kosovo over to the KLA might be interested to know that they are risking their lives on behalf of a criminal syndicate that for years has pumped heroin into the US and threatened the lives of American law enforcement officials."

Grigg commented: "The KLA did not exist before November 19 1997." He then quotes the French journal, Liberation, in its 21.1.99 issue: