[tgambill]

http://www.motherjones.com/news/special_reports/total_coverage/kosovo/ceku.html



http://www.balkanpeace.org/hed/archive/sept01/hed4073a.shtml


Agim Ceku, an Albanian Kosovar by birth, began his military career as an officer in the former federal Yugoslavian Army (JNA). When the initial Yugoslav break-up occurred in 1991, Ceku was quick to switch his loyalty to the Croatian cause of independence. As a colonel in the Croatian army, Ceku commanded the notorious 1993 operation now known as the Medak Pocket.

It was here that the men of the Second Battalion Princess Patricia´s Canadian Light Infantry came face to face with the vulgar savagery of which Ceku was capable. Over 200 Serbian inhabitants of the Medak Pocket were slaughtered in a grotesque manner (female rape victims were found after being burned alive). Our traumatized troops that buried the grisly remains were encouraged to collect evidence.

Nevertheless in 1995, Ceku, by then a general of artillery, was still at large. In fact, he was the officer responsible for shelling the Serbian refugee columns and for targeting the UN "safe" city of Knin during the Croatian offensive known as Operation Storm.

Just a few months after the Storm atrocities, Canada´s own Louise Arbour began making a name for herself as the chief prosecutor for The Hague tribunal. Despite the Canadian connection to these alleged crimes, Arbour and her lawyers chose instead to pursue more "politically prominent" individuals and seemingly little was done to bring Ceku to justice.

Fast forward to January 1999 and the world´s attention begins to focus on a war ravaged Kosovo. With the blessing of the U.S. State Department, Agim Ceku took his retirement (at age 37) from the Croatian army and was pronounced Supreme Commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK).

Throughout the air campaign against Yugoslavia, Ceku was portrayed as a loyal ally and he was frequently present at the NATO briefings with top generals such as Wesley Clark and Michael Jackson.

Under terms of the Kosovo peace deal, Ceku´s Albanian guerrillas were to be disarmed and re-constituted into a UN sponsored, (non-military) disaster relief organization known as the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC). ButCeku´s UCK never gave up their guns - nor their quest for a Greater Albania.

Although he is nominally maintaining an ´arms-length´ posture towards his former comrades, Agim Ceku is still worshipped as a saviour by both the UCK troops and Albanian-minority in Macedonia.

As this indicted war criminal continues to enjoy his freedom, bask in public attention, and collect a UN paycheque, our Canadian soldiers are risking their lives to disarm his UCK in Macedonia.

All in the name of peace and justice.

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http://www.balkanpeace.org/hed/archive/july00/hed292.shtml


The man chosen to head the KPC is well-known to Washington: Gen. Agim Ceku, former military Chief of Staff of the KLA. Ceku refined his brutality as a general in the US-backed Croatian Army during the Balkans war and was trained by Military Professional Resources Inc., a private paramilitary firm founded in 1987 and based in Alexandria, Virginia, with former high-ranking US generals and NATO officials on its board [see Ken Silverstein, "Privatizing War," July 28/August 4, 1997].

In 1995, armed with a contract authorized by the Clinton Administration, MPRI officially began to train Croatian forces.

Just months after MPRI arrived on the scene, Croatian forces carried out the notorious Operation Storm. In a brutal four-day blitzkrieg in 1995, these forces expelled some 200,000 Serbs from the Krajina region of Croatia after their villages were mercilessly shelled.

Jane’s Defence Weekly reported that Ceku was "one of the key planners" of the operation that the New York Times called "the largest single ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the war."

The criminal tribunal has been investigating Operation Storm for years. The Sunday Times of London recently reported that Ceku is also suspected by the tribunal of war crimes committed during raids he led in the south of Croatia in September 1993, when he was commanding the feared 9th Brigade. Spokeswoman Manuel says the UN is "aware" of Ceku’s history and the accusations against him but placed him at the head of the KPC "because he was the leader of the KLA when we arrived, and he wanted to contribute to the transformation of the KLA to a constructive force for the future of Kosovo."

Washington, maneuvering to reward the KLA in the "new" Kosovo, has sacrificed human tights and ethnic tolerance to a desire to maintain a close relationship with the forces it hopes to do business with for years to come.

In legitimizing Agim Ceku and thousands of other KLA members by putting them in positions of authority, Washington is giving ethnic cleansing a green light. Not criminally charging KPC members sends a clear message to those in and outside the KPC that crimes may continue with impunity. It’s not surprising that some of the worst brutality against Serbs has occurred in the US sector of Kosovo.

The only way the UN can begin to have credibility with minorities, particularly Serbs, is to remove Ceku from any position of authority within Kosovo and to dismantle the KLA, both in name and force. KPC members who commit crimes should be arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned, not just fired or internally disciplined. The United States should immediately cut all funding of the KPC until it is verified that it is no longer engaged in murder, torture, kidnapping and other atrocities.