Posted on 11/24/2001 4:41:11 PM PST by Pericles
Saturday November 24 10:38 AM ET
NATO's Kosovo Forces May Fight Terror
By DANICA KIRKA, Associated Press Writer
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - With efforts to build Kosovo's police going well, NATO's top commander here said alliance forces may be able to focus on keeping the province from becoming a haven for international terrorists and on fighting organized crime.
Troops now engaged in routine tasks such as guarding their own barracks could be better used in targeting dangerous elements that remain in the province following a war and a decade of oppression under former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, French Lt. Gen. Marcel Valentin told The Associated Press.
Valentin declined to offer specifics on what the 44,000 NATO-led peacekeepers might do or whether he believed Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network was using the largely Muslim southern Yugoslav province for operations.
But he said he was prepared ``to strike at the right place at the right time.''
Valentin spoke last week after Kosovo's first province-wide elections since Milosevic's ouster in 1999. The United Nations and NATO took control of the province after the alliance's 78-day bombing campaign that forced Milosevic to end his crackdown on independence-minded ethnic Albanians.
A new national assembly elected last weekend will choose a president and form a provincial government that will govern Kosovo alongside U.N. and alliance officials. Now that majority ethnic Albanians and minority Serbs have a greater voice in how the province is run, they will become more accountable for Kosovo's ups and downs, international officials say.
One of the most persistent problems Kosovo's international administrators have faced is the province's renegade past and a spirit of lawlessness that pervades virtually every aspect of society.
With efforts to build the Kosovo Police Service generally going well, Valentin said NATO may soon be free to help hunt down more elusive criminals, including helping the U.N. police contingent in fighting organized crime.
``We could support the U.N. police,'' Valentin said. ``We don't have to be on the front line.''
Valentin's remarks suggest a turning point in the province, where a lack of law and order has dogged efforts to rebuild and create political conditions stable enough to discuss Kosovo's future.
In the months after NATO took over in 1999, fear of kidnappings and the arrival of organized crime emptied the streets after dark. Reports of vigilante slayings popped up frequently in newspapers.
U.N. police needed time to set up operations, and Kosovo's unruly elements caught on quickly to the crime-fighting vacuum. For months, understaffed and underfunded international officers had to fight crime in a mission so chaotic that some said they were forced to barter with NATO peacekeepers for extra ammunition and buy their own office supplies.
Now police can claim that crimes of all kinds have dropped. Revenge attacks on Kosovo's most vulnerable community - the Serbs - have also declined, though that comes in part from the fact that tens of thousands of Serbs have left the province since Milosevic's forces were driven out.
Albanians Stall Macedonian Vote on Peace (So Al-Qaeda can move in forces for the winter offensive)
Macedonian Soldier Wounded (The First Round of Al-Qaeda's Winter Offensive)
I wrote this a few weeks ago:
Yugo intelligence has warned of the influx of Al-Qaeda cadres entering the Balkans since the air war in Afghanistan. These cadres are linking up with Albanians of the KLA in Kosovo and streaming over from Kosovo into positions around Tetovo. Tensions have been fanned by reports in nationalist media, dismissed by diplomats and even the moderate defense ministry as anti-reform disinformation, that rebels are remobilizing with reinforcements streaming in by night from Kosovo.
The Yugoslavs and FYROMacedonians were stunned that NATO chooses to ignore this information, and even ridiculed it; NATO to FYROM: Those rebels are hairy Albanians not Osama bin Laden's mujahideen. This has forced Yugoslavia and FYROM to unite military and intelligence resources.
NATO is either blind or politically compromised due to its past support for the Albanians.
NATO is finished as a force in the Balkans. The Albanians have taken their measure of NATO's capabilities and have brushed them aside. NATO will be left alone for now until the word is given Christmas time by Al-Qaeda. Camp Bondsteel will provide a plump feast for the holidays for Al-Qaeda's allies the UCK Albanians (KLA). KOSOVO: Prisoners of Fear (The US Military in Kosovo)
Camp Bondsteel's supply life line passes through the ambush country of Kacanik.
Look to the Kacanik Canyon. Watch for snow. The Barbarians are at the gate.
It is a hard thing to admit that our current (or is it former allies now?) were in league with al-Qaeda.
Read more about it at BIN LADEN GATE.
Well, that is one way of saying COUNTER-INSURGENCY CAMPAIGN!
A NEW WAVE OF ALBANIAN TERRORISM
Reports are coming in from Macedonia and Southern Serbia of a fresh wave of terrorism by Albanian extremists.
Petr Iskenderov looks at the situation.
The glooming forecast by observers about impending escalation in the Balkans it unfortunately coming to pass. Developments in the region are moving like a spiral and the world community must be prepared for a new round of war for the creation of the so-called greater Albania.
Ethnic Albanians in Macedonia have won more rights thanks to sustained diplomatic support by Western countries. The Albanian Minority a baa got desired representatives in the Macedonian security forces and president Boris Traikovsky has guaranteed the Albanian militants an amnesty. In response the extremists have unleashed a new wave of violence. The picture is the same in Southern Serbia where 6 months ago NATO envoys seemed to have brokered a settlement of the issues agitating the minds of Albanians living in the Preshevsky valley. A package of plans of socio-economic and political rehabilitation of regions inhabited by a mixture of Albanians and Serbs was thrashed out. Leaders of the so-called Liberation army of Preshevo, Medvezhi and Buyanovna had announced the disbanding of their armed units.
But it was a misleading announcement for in recent times Southern Serbia has been hit by a new wave of terrorism. On November 20 the Serbian police station in the village of Mukhovas was heavily shelled by machineguns. The perpetrators are the same people but only this time they have fused into the Liberation army of Eastern Kosovo.
The name Eastern Kosovo is symbolic for that is how the ideologues of a greater Albania have rechristened Southern Serbia. That explains the fresh round of tension in the region Albanian extremists view the constitutional changes, social privileges and the establishment of ethnic schools as one rung in the ladder hoisting Albanians to the height of a mono-ethnic republic which will preside over the illegal drug business, weapons smuggling and illegal immigration.
Consequently there's ongoing re-evaluation of values in Western Europe and the entire continent no speaks with one voice about the unacceptability of an independent Kosovo. The NATO envoy in Skopye capital of Macedonia Craig Ratkliff has made an unprecedentedly strong statement about Albanian militants in Macedonia. It is gradually dawning on Western politicians that it is absolutely necessary to outlaw Albanian terrorists.
11.23.2001
I want to believe President Bush will do the right thing. So I am wondering and waiting for him to take the Kosovo terroists to the woodshed. I am also waiting for the illegals in this country to be rounded up. I am waiting for troops to be placed on our borders instead of at our airports.I am waiting for him to tell the muslims in this country to speak out against any muslims who commit terroist acts or get the hell out of america before it is too late and to mean what he says. I am waiting for him to warn China instead of them warning us all the time.
These are serious issues that will protect the american people.Untill these things happen I will have to be wary of his actions. I support him now but I am concerned.
That is exactly what slobo thought....outlaw kla terrorists...look what it got him!!
Well, this war sure has legs that's for sure. It's spreading fast.
Looks to me like things could easily be heading in this direction,... all out war in the Mideast w/ Israel/Arabs/US etc. at the same time as a war in Europe, a move by the Chinese perhaps? And how do the Russians really feel about the US playing on their front porch to the West and their border to the South?
WWIII is not out of the question. Maybe this is what Bush meant by a "Difficult Period"ahead. That quote just might be the greatest understement of all time.
Right after 9/11, I briefly watched the BBC program Hardtalk, hosted by Tim Sebastian. He was asking a group of distinguished guests, I forget their names, about “why do they [the Arabs] hate us”. He prefaced a question by stating...
You would think they would appreciate all we [the west] have done for them in Bosnia and Kosovo.
To which one of the guests replied...
Well, the middle class ones do appreciate it.
Obviously, the quid wasn’t, and probably isn’t, enough for the quo. Not being generally optimistic, I’d look for a lot more quid in the Balkans. I hope I am wrong.
We hope very strongly that after 9/11 the Americans pulled a strong about-face with regards to that relationship. We will not be certain of this until we see the Albanians attack the Americans strongly. This is how I see it.
I think though that if the Albanians are in military conflict with the Americans at Bondsteel that the Albanians will be surprised by our strength and determination.
The train that connects Serbian enclaves in central Kosovo with the north of the province was a target of attack by Albanian population on several occasions.
Chief of Coordination Center for Kosovo and Metohija Nebojsa Covic sent yesterday severe protest to UNMIK on the occasion of attack on Milosavljevic couple just a hundred of meters away from the railway station in Obilic. 'It is necessary that UNMIK and KFOR find killers [terrorists] as urgent as possible and prevent such crimes in future', Covic said.
what is lord robertson going to do when he finds out that the terrorist and organized crime thugs are the very same police force that nato installed? better yet what will the good limey do when he finds out that we already know?
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