Posted on 03/26/2008 9:48:42 AM PDT by Bokababe
NEW YORK -- The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has released a new report.
It warned that the axis between South American drug cartels and the Albanian mafia have reached "alarming proportions", while reports by several intelligence agencies show that Kosovo is a distribution center on the crossroads of global routes and pathways of drug trafficking.
This presents reason for concern, primarily because of the new pathways of drug trafficking, and "inclusion of cocaine in the range of products offered by the groups that are active along the Balkan drug route", the UNODC annual report for 2007 said.
The Albanian mafia has recently begun taking over the control of ports in Romania, in addition to the already solid network existing in Albania and Montenegro, the report said.
This warning by UNODC is the latest in a series of alarming reports by a number of agencies in charge of fighting organized crime, including the FBI, Interpol and Europol, which state that the Albanian mafia is the most serious criminal organization in Europe because it controls a huge part of the heroin trade in a number of European state - Switzerland, Greece, Belgium, Austria, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Norway, and, recently, in Great Britain.
The western European heroin market, of which 40 to 75 percent is controlled by Albanians, brings annual earnings of around USD 7bn, which makes the trafficking in this type of narcotic by far the most profitable activity in the Balkans, western intelligence services have reported.
The territory that includes Albania, Kosovo and western Macedonia is a huge drug warehouse. Its contents are drugs measured not in kilograms, but in tons, a western diplomat posted in the Balkans said in a statement for Tanjug new agency, explaining how intelligence sources estimate that there are at least seven tons of heroin in this region at all times, ready to be moved to the West.
Former official of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Michael Levine has said that one of the wings of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was "linked with every known narco-cartel in the Middle East and the Far East", and that almost every European intelligence service and police has files on "connections between ethnic Albanian rebels and drug trafficking".
"Albania and Kosovo are the heart of the Balkan drug trade route which links Pakistan and Afghanistan with Europe. That route is worth around USD 7bn annually and around 80 percent of the heroin intended for the western European market is smuggled along this route," said a report presented to the U.S. Congress.
International representatives in Kosovo complained in the recent years that it is "difficult to estimate, in the complicated relations on the political scene of the Kosovo Albanians and ethnic Albanians in Macedonia or southern Serbia, whether politics controls organized crime or the mafia controls politicians".
The agency says it its report that it is "also possible, however, that organized criminal groups in Kosovo in fact have no influence on the authorities because they are actually those who are in power, as Italian General Fabio Mini said on his departure from the post of commander of KFOR, the international peacekeeping force in Kosovo".
Oh, no! Perish the thought that the wonderful Albanians might be criminals!
B92- Serbian station... Take this with a grain of salt... Clearly, they have an axe to grind.
B92: the station that usually is trying to shove Kosovo independence and EU membership down Serbs throats. There are more Albanians who post there than Serbs, and ex-US Ambassador Montgomery has a regular column there.
This kind of article is unusually forthright for B92. Their propaganda usually goes the other way.
and a righteous axe in my view
Bokababe, have you read about the several occasions of Albania ns and Kosovar albanians being caught crossing our southern border....it’s a small world after all....
I defer to you, as you seem to know more about that station than I do.
No, but it doesn't surprise me. The Albanian Mafia drug connection is long and well--established. Here is a cached version of a page citing articles on the Albanian Mafia & drugs all the way back to the 1980's.
B92 is a Soros funded propaganda outfit, you conveniently ignore this fact along with the idiots who are claiming that Carla Del Ponte is now a propagandist for Serbs.
Yes, but something is happening over there at B92. Generally, I only used them as a source for information, aware of the spin it was putting on things. Yet, since Kosovo declared independence, it has been producing less anti-Serb, pro-Albanian propaganda and doing some actual factual reporting. Can't tell you why.
Kosovo while under serbian control became a drug nation.
Good thing we can now stop it.
"War on Drugs", "War on Terror"? Right.....
LOL! Sure, believe that of it keeps you warm at night.
Wrong. I didn't know that... and I DESPISE Soros.
As usual when it comes to Serbs and Serbia, you are wrong. B92 is based in Serbia but it is George Soros owned outlet. They are as anti-Serb as one can gets.
Perthaps you are irked that Albanian narcoterrorists are put into the right perspective, even by Soros-owned outlet. Btw. reports about Albanian narcoterorism are not of Serbian provenance.
From the hills of Afghanistan and the forrests of Columbia, to the canyon of Wall Street, all under one umbrella.
War on Drugs is another name for elimination of competition.
Since some detractors call evidence about Albanian narcoterrorist activity Serbian propaganda, here is the same from other non-Serbian, non-American sources.
The author is leading French criminologist and expert on terrorism.
Look at post 16
You sound just like a Leftist describing Fox News!
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