US Accused of Siding With 'Criminals and Jihadists' in Kosovo

i keep getting confused..is it Kosovo ? or Kosovo ?
( I suppose it depends on if one is a Serb or Albanian )

Kosovo I think is commonly recognized term.

arg...I meant Kosovo vs. Kosova

-:))) I think Kosovo is the most accurate spelling, although I heard Kosovoa too.

I'd be glad to read them.

Al-Qaeda's Jihad In Europe: The Afghan-Bosnian Network: Evan Kohlmann
Be Not Afraid, For You Have Sons in America: Stacy Sullivan

Al Qaida made a play in Bosnia, but the locals didn't buy into it, which is why we were there for a decade without jihadi troubles. While there were and are still some dead-enders there, whenever we 'request' Bosnian action on behalf of our concerns, the Bosnians comply with our wishes.

As to Kosovo, Al Qaida tried to set up shop in Albania and sent out feelers to the KLA in 1998. Claude Kader met with the KLA in April of '98 and was told to get lost. 2 months later, Kader along with his 4 man cell were arrested in a joint CIA/Albanian intelligence operation and we've now been in Kosovo for over 7 years - you tell me how many jihadi attacks our troops have suffered.

The long and the short of it is that if you're looking for jihadis, you'd be better served looking in the Philippines than in the Balkans.

Like it or not, Milosevic lost Kosovo. Misrepresenting Milosevic's failed race war as part of the War on Terror isn't going to get you anywhere outside of the small circle of true believers who were silly enough to fall for the lie in the first place.

so if I misrepresent it, all of them got to be misrepresenting too

Exactly right.

Oh, dear, not the ethnic Albanians again! While I realize that former president Clinton was totally enthralled by their struggle to establish a muslim terrorist state and by an almost psychopathic need to declare them God's gift to humankind, I remain interested in the question I asked then and ask again now: Why the heck aren't those folks in Albania, where one would suspect they belong?

>>>The fact that Bush Administration continues Balkan pro-Muslim policies of Clinton-Albright crew 5 Years after 9-11 and after regime change in Serbia is simply inexcusable. <<<

Bill Clinton is a good buddy of G.W.'s dad.

"Bush continues Clinton Balkan policies of letting Kosovo becoming de-jure independent Jihad state."

The agreement was signed with the UN. Unless we kick the UN out (and even if we do the EU would not agree) I know of nothing that can be done to reverse the decision made by Clinton.

"It is to our nation's shame that George W. Bush has followed in Bill Clinton's footsteps regarding our policies in the Balkans."

And how can you change something that has been agreed by the UN and the EU? There is nothing that can be done. Just as FDR gave Eastern Europe to the USSR and then we as a country had to fight them for over 50 years once the papers are signed there is not much that can be done. Although Truman tried to push the USSR out it was not possible. We kept them out of Japan which was a great win for us.

"whenever we 'request' Bosnian action on behalf of our concerns, the Bosnians comply with our wishes"

Here is a recent article that I found about supposed Bosnian govm't cooperation with the US. This "cooperation" with rooting out Islamists from Balkans is done only after US puts a squeeze on Bosnian govm't. You can read in it's entirety here. Bosnia rules to revoke citizenships

The Bosnian government is bringing to a close five months of work reviewing how some 1,500 people - most of them fighters who came to Bosnia from Muslim countries during the 1992-1995 war - gained Bosnian citizenship.

The review of these naturalized citizens coincides with the country's first-ever terrorism trial, which has sparked concerns that mujahideen who stayed on after the war here could be involved in a European terrorism cell.

The 1,500 naturalized Bosnian citizens were given until last week to provide all documents used to gain Bosnian citizenship between 1992-1996.

Though the results of the review have not been made public, ISN Security Watch has learned though a high-ranking police source close to the investigation that the review commission has already ruled to revoke the citizenship of 38 people, while a similar ruling is expected for 23 others in the coming days.

According to the police source, as many as 40 percent of the 1,500 naturalized citizens in question will lose their status and be deported to their countries of origin with no right to appeal. “Those people gained Bosnian citizenship by wartime regulations and there were major […] abuses. There have been several revisions of their citizenships, but there has never been the political will to act until the US embassy here and the international community started pressing the issue," the police source said.

"Misrepresenting Milosevic's failed race war as part of the War on Terror isn't going to get you anywhere outside of the small circle of true believers who were silly enough to fall for the lie in the first place."

Sorry but this is a twisting of my points. My point is specifically that Milosevic was "lesser evil" than KLA and Bosnian Jihadists in a long term. My predictions that we hear much more about Jihadi activities in Kosovo and Bosnia if the Islamic states will be de-jure created there.

And to add to my previous post, here is the 1995 post on Iranian guards being present in Bosnia since 1990's. Note the text in bold . Bosnian Muslim leadership promised to the US expel all foreign Muslim mujahedeen from the Bosnia by January 1996. 10 years later, they are still "expelling" them. That's how they "comply with our wishes" -:)))) And what these Mujaheedeen are doing now in Bosnia--having a pool party ?

http://www.corpuschristischoolno.com/WORLD/Bosnia/updates/dec95/12-05/troops/index.html

As U.S. troops began arriving there were warnings they could be targeted by Iranian Revolutionary Guards who have been helping Bosnia's Moslem-led army. The Los Angeles Times reported that Washington regarded some 200 Iranian guards who have been training the Bosnian army and volunteers from other Islamic countries as a major threat. U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry said on Monday he had been assured by Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic that all 2,000 foreign Moslem fighters would be removed within 30 days of the signing of the accord on December 14.

Perry said special precautions would be taken against possible attacks on U.S. troops from Islamic fundamentalists. Privately however U.S. officials feared the Bosnian government might find it hard to expel fighters from Iran, the country that did most to help Bosnia militarily and financially in its hour of need, the paper reported. The U.S. government fears Iran may use Bosnia as a venue for attacking American troops or facilities in retaliation for the tightening of U.S. sanctions against Tehran last spring and years of U.S. hostility towards it, the paper added.

ping

This "cooperation" with rooting out Islamists from Balkans is done only after US puts a squeeze on Bosnian govm't.

And? What don't you understand about complying with American wishes? If only Serbia would be so prompt in regards to arresting ICTY indictees or trying the Serbian police responsible for the murder of the Bytyqi brothers, you might have had a leg to stand upon.

But you don't.

Milosevic was the bigger evil in the neighborhood as far as American interests are concerned, which is why we acted and continue to act the way we do.

Just out of curiosity, is there anything differentiating your dire prediction from those we've heard regarding Bosnia since Dayton or Kosovo since 1999? Your chances of being the true Cassandra after a decade of wanna-be's isn't looking too good.

If you're looking to pursue non-American interests, find yourself a different country to prod. If you're looking to pursue American interests, you'd best get your facts straight first.

It was defacto NATO action, but forced by Clinton. Per example Greece simpley refused to cooperate and even prohibitet use of her airspace and territory.

Iran is also in both Kosovo and "Bosnia". You know, the same Iran that is orchestrating the two-front war against Israel, building nuclear bombs, screaming for worldwide islamist revolution, and underminng Americans and others in Iraq. The same Iran that took all those American hostages in Tehran in 1979, and killed all those Marines in Lebanon in 1983.

It's time to reverse American foreign policy in the Balkans 180 degrees, and to favor the Serbian nation!!!! Dump clinton, Halfbright, Holbrook, the KLA, and Ahmadinutjob!!!!

It was NATO. The UN was bypassed.

The UN did not get involved until after the diplomacy by bombing ended!

"If you're looking to pursue American interests, you'd best get your facts straight first."

Our American interests as also favor, with the exception of the Balkans. Our interests are built on fabrications and lies starting in the late 80's to early 90's. We favored the Muhjas...and brought the cancer to the Balkans and in fact stirred up the trouble. Yes, Milo responded badly, with a heavy hand...and yes there were murders that they have to account for. The same goes with Ceku, Ramush, and many of the KLA murderers...and terrorist. Others like the FARC had to run for their lives to Europe to escape the arm of the KLA under our watchful eye. Members of the FARC returned after 1999 only to finally get murdered under our watchful eye....(Commander Drini, Tahir Zimaj, Muhammand Xhelmi, Mustafa...shall I continue?) It's a bad bad thing we did in the Balkans stirring up the trouble, it's a bad thing that the Serbs did allowing the paramititaries to run amonk, however, they were being beheaded and murdered also by the scum bag muzzies.......that we have kill now. There were no rape camps and farms where they were purposely inpregnating Muslim women...BS...there were no 8,000 murdered in Srebinica...there were no 10,000 massacred in Kosovo....and the war criminals on the Muslim side not only got away with it...they were given government jobs.....

http://www.focus-fen.net/index.php?catid=144&newsid=92650&ch=0
>
>
> Focus News Agency (Bulgaria)
> July 21, 2006
>
>
> Kosovo Mafia Makes Death Threat to UNMIK Police
> Commissioner
>
>
> Pristina - UNMIK Police Commissioner Kai Vittrup told
> in an interview with a Danish TV station that the
> Kosovo Albanians mafia had threatened him with death
> and that is why his personal protection has been
> reinforced, RTS informs.
>
> "One gets used to the threats and if I were afraid I
> wouldn't have stayed in Kosovo.
>
> "The threat I received is actually a threat to all UN
> officials in Kosovo therefore we are carrying out an
> investigation and are taking the necessary protection
> measures," Kai Vittrup said.
>
> "My wife left Kosovo and it was a joint decision. No
> threat should make a Police Commissioner leave
> Kosovo," he added.
>
> The UNMIK Police Chief said that there are various
> crime forms in the region - from the classical, like
> robberies and murders, to organized crime dealing with
> drugs and arms.
>
> "This is a mafia ran by families on the clan
> principle. It is a closed system that is hard to track
> down, but we are progressing," Kai Vittrup added.

The Bush Administration cannot reverse the process. The independence of Kosovo has a much bigger role and is part of a bigger agenda. This was planned a long time ago...late 70's early 80's....

We were on the wrong side in that war.

Say it LOUDER!

Actually what you say is partially right. This is true. The Jihadist came to Kosovo in 1999, and started preaching "Run the KFOR out like you did the Serbs"..etc...Albanian Mafia (KLA membership), basically threatened these members of the Saudi Charities and the IMAMs who came to stir up trouble. There was one attack which was not published but it was pre-planned and there was no argument about our policies and so forth. It was a well planned terrorist attack that was not made public then. Also, there was a planned suicide bomber attack planned for Camp Bondsteel, during a lunch hour. I don't remember whether is was in 2003 or 2004. I know because I knew the polygrapher personally that discovered the plot before it was carried to fruition. These are only two that I know about, and I suspect that you are right about us controlling the attacks against U.S. personnel and internations during that time. However, it was a short fix as the Mafia and the Jihadist that are living there have just been patient and waiting for the carrot to fall off the stick....the carrot of which I speak is the same that Adolf hitler gave them......the Independence Issue. The Albanians formed an Albanian SS group called the Skenderberg divisions that murdered thousands of Slavs and Jews in WWII. The Serbs were on our side then....Now, we are playing both sides....and yes, as I said, I will have to agree on your point about controlling the Jihadist from 1999 to date......with some exceptions, but for the most part yes. Until the time is over and it will start.....

Sorry about the long post, but I don't have all the links...articles 1-3 as support.....

PRISTINA, KOSOVO, April 24, 2004 (AP) - Authorities are investigating whether a Jordanian U.N.policeman

who killed three U.S. corrections officers in a gunbattle at a Kosovo prison had links to the Palestinian militant group Hamas, a senior NATO official said. As investigators tried to pin down Sgt. Maj. Ahmed Mustafa Ibrahim Ali's motive, a clearer picture of the April 17 attack emerged this week.

Witnesses, U.N. officials, medical personnel and NATO officers, in interviews with the Associated Press, described a scene in which the officers were trapped between a locked gate and Ali's assault rifle. Eleven officers were wounded before the officers shot and killed Ali, a Palestinian from Jordan. No one is certain what prompted him to open fire, but a survivor said Ali was smiling during his shooting spree, a U.N. source familiar with the investigation said. The attack came three days after U.S. President George W. Bush endorsed a plan by Israeli PrimeMinister Ariel Sharon to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and, the permanence of some Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The plan rules out resettling Palestinian refugees in Israel.

A enior NATO official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that besides the investigation into any links with Hamas, authorities were examining a trip Ali took to Saudi Arabia only a month before he joined the mission in March to see if it might be connected to the attack.

Jordan's government said Ali, 30, was a distinguished member of his homeland's special police unit and had been decorated for helping to ward off an attack on the Israeli Embassy in the Jordanian capital, Amman. The United Nations has refused to discuss details of the investigation.

Much is at stake for the U.N. in the outcome of the investigation because the police mission in Kosovo, and others like it, rely on throwing together officers from member countries regardless of political philosophy. "The incident is so grave and appalling that it really calls into question the mission's integrity and unity," said Alex Anderson of the International Crisis Group, a Belgian think tank.

Like Ali, the corrections officers were new to Kosovo. They arrived just 10 days before the attack and were part of an effort to bring professional corrections expertise into the prisons. Since the U.N. took control of the province in 1999, the prison has been supervised by police with little specialized training. The world body moved into Kosovo after a 78-day NATO air war was launched to stop former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown on independence-minded ethnic Albanians.

The attack began at the end of the officers' first day at work. Sharing small talk, the officers piled into two vans and a sports utility vehicle and drove to the gate. That is when Ali opened fire. Bulletspierced the vehicles. Kim Bigley, a prison warden, died in the driver's seat. Gary Weston pushed another guard out of the line of fire, saving her life. Seconds later, gunshots shattered Weston's skull.

The other officers pulled their pistols and sprang for cover. An Austrian officer in one of the outlying buildings, Andreas Pumpa, heard the shooting and ran toward it, only to run into Ali, who sprayed his legs with gunfire. The officers exchanged fire with their attacker, who was armed with an M-16 automatic rifle. Blocked by the gate, and with buildings on either side, the officers were trapped.

"There was nothing to do but stand and fight," a U.N. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "And they stood and fought." Ali mowed down a line of officers scrambling toward a wall. One of those wounded may be paralyzed. When he had shot all those he could see, Ali paced around the vans, searching for more victims. Inside the prison, people were confused. Several officers raced to the exit, but rounds began to pound into the door. With the only way out blocked, they hit the floor.

Three hundred yards away, in what the officers later called the killing zone, the U.S. citizens realized no help was on the way. Finally, they got a break:
Ali's weapon jammed. As he scrambled to clear it, the corrections officers counterattacked, managing to get into the guard shack where Ali's four subordinates cowered. They seized the Jordanians' weapons and attacked Ali with equal firepower:
His body took 16 rounds.

The officers were detained. Authorities suspect Ali's subordinates may have played a role because more than 400 rounds were fired. The investigation is examining whether they fed him ammunition - so he could keep shooting. Of the other U.S. citizens killed, Lynn Marie Williams died soon after being taken to the nearby Serb hospital. Weston was put on life support after the shooting and sent back to the U.S. The U.N. mission announced his death Saturday.

Focus News Agency (Bulgaria)
> July 21, 2006
>
>
> Kosovo Mafia Makes Death Threat to UNMIK Police
> Commissioner
>
>
> Pristina - UNMIK Police Commissioner Kai Vittrup told
> in an interview with a Danish TV station that the
> Kosovo Albanians mafia had threatened him with death
> and that is why his personal protection has been
> reinforced, RTS informs.
>
> "One gets used to the threats and if I were afraid I
> wouldn't have stayed in Kosovo.
>
> "The threat I received is actually a threat to all UN
> officials in Kosovo therefore we are carrying out an
> investigation and are taking the necessary protection
> measures," Kai Vittrup said.
>
> "My wife left Kosovo and it was a joint decision. No
> threat should make a Police Commissioner leave
> Kosovo," he added.
>
> The UNMIK Police Chief said that there are various
> crime forms in the region - from the classical, like
> robberies and murders, to organized crime dealing with
> drugs and arms.
>
> "This is a mafia ran by families on the clan
> principle. It is a closed system that is hard to track
> down, but we are progressing," Kai Vittrup added.

Interesting read.....

The New Islamic Mafia Albanian Mafia......

"FBI has recently announced that ethnic Albanian gangs, including immigrants from Kosovo, are replacing the Italian La Cosa Nostra mafia...

The New Islamic Mafia
By M. Bozinovich

FBI has recently announced that ethnic Albanian gangs, including immigrants from Kosovo, are replacing the Italian La Cosa Nostra mafia as the leading organized crime outfit in the US. According to a CNN report the FBI "Officials said ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro" make up the emerging American criminal cartel and "represent a major challenge to federal agents because of their propensity for violence and brutality." This statement comes several months after Amnesty International declared NATO-administered Kosovo province a hotbed of organized crime activity.

In Europe, the Albanian Mob is already the chief perpetrator of drug and people smuggling, passport theft and forgery, weapons and human body parts sales, sex-slavery, abductions, murders... The scope, ferocity and intensity of the Albanian criminal activity has prompted the Italian top prosecutor, Cataldo Motta, to declare Albanians most dangerous mobsters brandishing them in 2000 "a threat to Western society."

While the skimpiness of the FBI statement may be a subtle illustration of its lack of hard operational intelligence on the emerging Albanian criminal network in the US, the displacement of La Cosa Nostra by ethnic Albanians may be a seminole event in the American criminal underworld history for yet another reason: a predominantly Catholic Mafia is being replaced by a predominantly Muslim Albanian Fis.

Although no hard links with terrorists have been found yet, the FBI believes that the emerging Muslim Albanian Mafia in the US may be implicated in terrorist financing hence FBIs continuing surveillance "to see whether the militant Muslims in the emerging organized crime world demonstrate ties to organizations suspected of involvement in terrorist financing".

Albanian teenager Valentina Bicaku vanished from her home in Albania. More than 30,000 Albanian girls and young women are kidnapped and auctioned off into a world of prostitution in Europe.
Evolution of the Criminal Network

During the 1970s Albanian expatriates in the US were actively recruited as couriers, transporters or assassins for the Italian Mafia. The efficiency and brutality with which these members conducted these criminal affairs got them to advance within the Mafia network, so much so, that by 1996 the main assassins for the Gambino crime family were ethnic Albanians. Gambino's Sammy Bull Brovano's go-to "clipper", for example, was an ethnic Albanian, Zef Mustafa, whose notoriety for murder and racket was exceeded only by his love of alcohol: drunk from dawn, in a 1996-02 span this Albanian organized a $19 million internet heist, was let out on a $5 million bond and has since disappeared from the US.

A 1996 murder of a waiter, Jonathon Segal, and a bouncer, Michael Greco, in New York's Scores restaurant illustrates the indifference and haste with which Albanian assassins kill: two ethnic Albanians employed as Gambino family assassins opened fire on the waiter and bouncer after instigating an argument over quality of service they got in the restaurant.

Ismail Lika, pictured on the right with long sleeves, in Florida jail posing with convicted ethnic Serb, Nikola Kavaja. Dubbed the king of the New York drug underworld, Ismail Lika issued a contract on Guiliani's prosecutors in 1985. Kavaja was serving a sentence for attempted assassination of Yugoslav communist dictator Tito.

While employment with Italian Mafia gave these ethnic Albanians valuable experience in the art of a criminal heist, 1980s was also a decade of clandestine criminal initiatives that are to lead into bigger and more spectacular ones later. In 1985, for example, a now-famous Rudolph Guiliani led a persecution team of the Balkan Connection - an ethnic Albanian criminal outfit involved in trafficking heroin from Afghanistan and Turkey, via Kosovo into US. Caught with at least $125 million in heroin, members of this Albanian smuggling outfit issued a $400,000 contract on the prosecutor Alan Cohen and the detective Jack Delemore, both placed under protective custody as the result.

Even fellow mobsters are afraid to do business with the Albanian gangs. Speaking anonymously for Philadelphia's City Paper a member of the "Kielbasa Posse", an ethnic Polish mob group, declared in 2002 that Poles are willing to do business with "just about anybody. Dominicans. Blacks. Italians. Asian street gangs. Russians. But they won't go near the Albanian mob. The Albanians are too violent and too unpredictable."

While FBI concurs with the brutality assessment, the difficulty in obtaining operational intelligence on the Albanian mafia, and any convictions, may be multifold. Dusan Janjic, Coordinator of the Forum for Ethnic Relations in Serbia, cites three reasons for the success of the Albanian criminal gangs: "Firstly they speak a language that few people [sic] understand. Secondly, its internal organization is based on family ties, breeding solidarity and safety. Thirdly there is the code of silence and it is perfectly normal for somebody to die if he violates the code."

Culture of Violence

According to the Institute of War and Peace Reporting, "Honour killings are deeply rooted in Albanian society and were given formal recognition in the collection of medieval tribal laws known as the 'Canon of Lekë Dukagjini'" and still remains the organizing structure of the Albanian society. "...blood feuds were relatively rare among Albanians either in Kosovo or Albania. But after the turmoil of the 1990s, the ideas contained in Leke's canon revived," writes Fatos Bytyci.

The fundamental rule of Canon law of Albanian clansman organization is Bessa - a concept that simultaneously converges loyalty, fidelity, dignity and honor of one's word. Although restrictive, the concept is such a prevalent force in the Albanian culture so that it got enshrined in many of Albanian folksongs:

"death happens because you betrayed a host,
when bread is missing to serve the host,
death happens for the faith renounced."

Gjakmarria or taking of the blood is the vendetta killing done in order to restore the violated honor.

Loyalty to the family clan (fis) and vendettas appear to be mutually affectionate features of both the Italian and Albanian gangsters. Much like Sicilian social emphasis on family loyalty, writes the Italy's anti-mafia agency DIA, these mutually alike features are outgrowth of a general social construct and not necessarily criminal. "Albanian mafia is based on family groups... The division among clans or family groups in Albania was originally a social division, not a criminal one. Today, every activity in Albania still works in that way."

In the field of politics, however, the fear of the Canon's consequences is plunging Albania, an increasingly Kosovo, into a seismic convulsion of lawlessness.

Albanian Parliament in Tirana has recently addressed the close connection between the criminal and political. According to the Albanian Daily News, in July of 2004, the Albanian government has adopted a package of anti-mafia legislation and among the provisions is a prohibition of officials convicted of corruption from holding public office for a specified period of time.

However, according to an Albanian writer Faruk Myrtaj: "Not a single trial of a criminal gang has successfully been completed in Albania. According to the data of the Albanian Centre for Studying Organized Crime and Mafia in Tirana, trials of groups linked to politics are usually held behind closed doors by decision of the courts, and the judges usually resign and emigrate from the country", presumably out of fear of being killed acording to the Canon law that grips the Albanian society.

So much for Albania's efforts to curb organized crime.

Dangerous Hybrid
- Kosovo Albanian Dobrosi was serving 14 year sentence in Norway and in 1997 bribed the guard with 150,000 Norwegian crowns, fled to Croatia, where he underwent plastic surgery to change his appearance, then moved to Prague where, according to the Czech daily Lidove Noviny met the President of Kosovo, Ibrahim Rugova, during his visit of Prague in December 1998. In 1999 Czech Police arrested Dobrosi, along with another Kosovo Albanian gangster for drug trafficking and trafficking with light-infantry weapons and rocket systems.

Political-Criminal Hybrid

According to research by a leading criminologist in France, Xavier Raufer, "In the Albanian world - in Albania and in Kosovo and in the Albanian-populated part of Macedonia - you have clans and in those clans you have a mix of young men fighting for the cause of national liberation, young men belonging to the mafia, young men driving their cousins or other girls from the village into prostitution. It's absolutely impossible to distinguish between them.... The guys are liberation fighters by day and sell heroin by night or vice versa".

The political-criminal hybrid structure based on the frightening Canon structures of clan membership is defining the Albanian political landscape in the Balkans as well.

For example, the leader of the Albanians in Macedonia, Ali Ahmeti, is a nephew of Fazli Veliu, former chief of an Albanian language newspaper in Kosovo and a cofounder of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Both are from the same village near Kicevo, Macedonia, and both belong to the Zajas clan. Before leading a military insurgency in Macedonia, Ahmeti was employed as a KLA operative out of Switzerland, from where he was moved to Macedonia when times were ripe to lead the Albanian violence there.

Albright giving a friendly hug to the KLA leader Hasim Taci

In turn, Veliu is close to the Albanian Jashari clan from Kosovo, known to be the first to start the armed uprising against Milosevic's repression. Main victims in the disputed Racak massacre were members from the Jashari clan as is Hasim Taci, a youthful political spokesman for an Albanian para-military (KLA) group with suspicious criminal biography yet befriended by Clinton's foreign policy team, most notably Madeline Albright, Richard Holbrooke and Wesley Clark.

Many, including the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee in 1999, have accentuated widespread allegations of KLAs criminal connections. Citing that a "major portion of the KLA finances are derived from [criminal] network, mainly proceeds from drug trafficking" the report goes on to say that Clinton's befriending of the shady Albanian political men is "consistent Clinton policy of cultivating relationships with groups known for terrorist violence... 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."

Unofficial taxation of Albanians
- Allegations are made that the Albanian Mafia in America is acting as a collection arm for the war aims of the Albanian political groups. Christian Science Monitor, for example, cited a case of Agim Jusufi, a building superintendent on Manhattan's West Side. Mr. Jusufi gets a weekly paycheck. He describes himself as an ordinary 'working man.'" yet he wrote a $5,000 check for the KLA. "We have canceled checks to prove it,' he told the Monitor.
While the Republican Report cites New York Times' version of the origins of the KLA to be a "radical fringe of Kosovar Albanian politics, originally made up of diehard Marxist" the clan structure indicates that this may be a deliberate fabrication. Claims are made that 15 leading family clans in Albania (15 fis) have been controlling a clandestine smuggling operations even during the dark communist days of dictator Enver Hoxa. When Albania got rid of the communist, these fis increased their criminal control of Albania and, during the collapse of the Albanian state into anarchy in 1997, the 15 fis established complete control over the criminal activity in Albania including arms smuggling. Motivated by fear of inter-fis blood feuds over a limited Balkan criminal turf, the 15 fis allegedly made a deal to make a common para-military enforcement unit, the KLA, in order to incite violence in Kosovo with dual objectives, to make money financing the war as well as conquer Albanian-inhabited areas of the Balkans.

Daut Kadriovski

The most prominent criminal out of the 15 fis is Daut Kadriovski, a drug kingpin that managed to escape German prison in 1993, and is believed to be in the US where sources say he is operating through several types of businesses in New York and Philadelphia.

Albanian Mafia and al-Qaeda?

Allegations of an al-Qaeda presence in Albanian inhabited areas have also been made. For example, 24 Wahabi mosques and 14 orphanages have been built in Kosovo since 1999, along with 98 primary and secondary Wahabi funded schools. The chief Albanian Imam in Kosovo has been schooled in the Wahabi doctrine in Saudi Arabia and is of vital political importance to the party of the Kosovo President Ibrahim Rugova.

Wahabism is the chief spiritual source of the al-Qaeda terrorists.

More distressing for the West is the existing Albanian criminal infrastructure that has been exported out of Kosovo into Europe, and given clan connections, may infiltrate the US.

In Brussells, for example, two Islamic city quarters - one specializing in terrorism and the other in false and stolen passports - complement one another. In the terrorist part is the Dar Salaam hotel where the accused "shoe bomber" Richard Reid stayed in for 10 days plotting to blow up American Airlines jet, while just across from the hotel is a shadowy Brussels strip of bars and hotels controlled by the Albanian mob specializing in stolen passports. According to the Global Policy, the quarter is a hotbed for "human trafficking, sex trafficking and false do*****ents."

Although Richard Reed did not carry any of the Albanian doctored false passports, the al-Qaeda assassins of the Ahmed Shah Massoud did. The killers of the leader of Afghan's Northern Alliance traveled from London to Karachi using these Albanian doctored false passports before they murdered him.

More ominously still, an al-Qaeda operative, Djamel Beghala, was arrested in Dubai after the customs agent recognized one of these Albanian mafia's manufactured false passports. Under interrogation, Beghala identified a major European al-Qaeda cell that was planning to blow up the United States Embassy in Paris.

Recently, FBI conducted a statistical study on effectiveness of false passports and concluded that at least 10% of the falsified passports have effectively been used to enter the US. Given that 30 million people enter US, Albanian Mafia's monopoly on false do*****entation may indeed justify FBIs continuing surveillance of the emerging Albanian criminal cartel.

Entrance-level job for al-Qaeda
-Before becoming kingpins of the American underworld, many ethnic Albanian mobsters got their organized crime initiation as couriers for the Italian Mafia. Fox News analyst, Manossor Ijaz, claims that ethnic Albanians now hold an entry-level courier position for al-Qaeda as well:

"... President Bush said in October of last year when he identified a senior al Qaeda leader [Abu Masab al-Zawkawi] who had gone to Iraq, received medical treatment to have a leg amputated that was blown up in the Afghan bombing campaign and then proceeded to a northern Iraqi terrorist outfit. What we have not yet heard and this is what my sources are telling me over the past two or three days, is that that leader was in fact, transported through southern Turkey using Albanian mercenaries to transport him into..."

The New Islamic Mafia

Yossef Bodansky, director of the House Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, believes that Albanian Mob itself will not commit acts of terrorism but that their criminal infrastructure will aid al-Qaeda. "The role of the Albanian Mafia, which is tightly connected to the KLA, is laundering money, providing technology, safe houses, and other support to terrorists within this country," Bodansky explained to The New American. "This isn't to say that the Albanians themselves would carry out the actual terrorist operations. But there are undoubtedly 'sleeper' agents within the Albanian networks, and they can rely upon those networks to provide them with support. In any case, a serious investigation of the Albanian mob isn't going to happen, because they're 'our boys' - they're protected."

In fact, in 2002 the government of Macedonia submitted to the CIA a 79-page report on al-Qaeda-Albanian activity in the Balkans, including an al-Qaeda recruitment video aimed at Albanian conscripts touting hate for Christians, Jews, and the West. The video was hosted by an ethnic Turk, Ramzi Adem, who was demonstrating Balkan activities of an elite 120-man foreign fighters unit led by Selimi Ferit, an Albanian born in the Macedonian capital of Skopje.

Perhaps out of tactical, short-term reasons, the Bush administration duly ignored this report. Yet one ought to be mindful that it may be for the tactical advantages, to the terrorists, to present all of these criminal machinations as a haphazard event.

The seeming disconnect in the activities of terrorists is the insidiousness for which they are known.

Note: Source: http://www.serbianna.com/
columns/mb/028.shtml"