[homeagain balkansvet]

Well, now we get into what we used to call the Map War. Next some Chetnik will come on line and show the extent of Serbia under Tsar Lazar in 1389 and say, SU MA SRPSKA! WHERE ANY SERBIAN EVER LIVED THAT IS SERBIA! (What that means about certain suburbs in Chicago and Detroit goes unmentioned...) Next, some Ustashe will show a map of Croatia under King Tomislav and say, THIS IS CROATIA! WHERE ANY CROAT EVER LIVED THAT IS CROATIA! Then some Turk (by which I mean someone from Turkey, NOT a Bosniac) will show up and say, "We once ruled this ENTIRE thing...." etc.

Seems reasonable at first. But the end result? Kravica.

If Serbs in Croatia or Bosnia didn't like the local government, they had every right to vote with their feet and move to Serbia, selling their homes at a reasonable price to Croats or Muslims who didn't want to live under Slobo. But NOOOOOO. YOU guys started playing the "Why should I live as a minority in YOUR state when YOU can be a minority in MINE?" game. End result? Kravica.

Maybe civil war was inevitable given the Jackson Pollock demographics of the three countries, which to an outsider is really one nation consisting of three groups of religious bigots. Had you kept the fighting to solder-against-soldier, we wouldn't have gotten involved.

But when you exterminated huge numbers of helpless and captured prisoners, you lost the right to settle it by inherent force of arms. We came, we saw, we kicked your ass. And peace, of a sort, came.

Be glad you didn't REALLY tick us off. The Republika Srpska is a corrupt bastard state, Moldova without the charm, and given the way things out, we would have been better off having the Croats and Muslims conquer the whole thing. As it is, we're stuck with it. And you.

[DestroyEraseImprove]

These maps are from 1981, not from a few hundred years ago. Can't you read? You haven't answered any of my questions yet. Looser.

If Serbs in Croatia or Bosnia didn't like the local government, they had every right to vote with their feet and move to Serbia, selling their homes at a reasonable price to Croats or Muslims who didn't want to live under Slobo.

No, I have to repeat it again for you. The Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia were Yugoslav citizens on Yugoslav soil at that time. No one had the right to stripp them of their constitutional rights. As Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina claimed the right to self-determination to seperate from Yugoslvia, the serbs of Krajina and Republika Srpska in response claimed their right to self-determination and secession from the newly created statelettes. That right was denied to the serbs from the begining on, no negotiations were offered, it was just prohibited by Tudman, Izetbegovic, Genscher... and so the doors for an armed conflict were openend. Not to mention, that the secession of Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina were unconstitutional in the first place and against the declared will of the serbian population, a constituent people, within those republics.

Is that so difficult to understand for you?

Let's just set the record straight: recognition of Yugoslavia's breakaway republics as independnet states was a violation of the Helsinki Agreement because it was a violation of the Yugoslav as well as republican constitutions. Recognizing internal republican borders as international boundaries was also illegal.

[Karadjordje]

Look what the Communist Canadian (UN) soldier James D. Davis writes in his book "The Sharp End":

"Our orders so far had made no mention of exactly how we were to enforce anything. In fact, we were pretty much told to step aside if the belligerants wanted to kill one another. If that was a case, what the hell were we doing? Why had they named us the 'UN Protection Force'? The Serbs in the enclave agreed to remove the very weapons that were protecting their lives because they believed the UN would protect them. Unknown to them, our orders were to simply let the Croat forces pass if they really wanted to attack, which is exactly what happened. The end result was that we managed to defeat the Serbs for the Croats by preying on their faith in the UN. If that little with the flower died when the Croats attacked, then it was my fault and the fault of the UN's stupidity."

James R. Davis' book "The Sharp End, A Canadian Soldier's Story", published by Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver/Toronto, 1997, p. 131.

Source: http://www.balkanpeace.org/wcs/wct/wctu/wctu02.shtml (<- click)

Karadjordje

[DestroyEraseImprove]

You know cowboy, I'm fed up with you claiming here some moral highground. You can come up with bs like Srebrenica and I'll tell you about Nasir Oric. Or what about the killings in Vukovar by the ZNG'e, before the serbs liberated the town? The Racak hoax? What about the extermination of native americans, the indians? What about Hiroshima, Nagasaki? What about agent orange in Vietnam? You don't have any moral highground. Climb down from your horse and start answering to my questions from the begining of this discussion. So let's go back...

Articles written when Kosovo was not famous...

Background material about Kosovo, especially the material disseminated by mainstream channels, is deficient in many aspects, but perhaps the most startling feature of many such articles is the singular way of examining the history of the region. We are told that Kosovo is the cradle of Serbian nation and we learn about the battle of 1389 and then, in most articles, with a gigantic leap that would make envious any athlete, the article strides 600 years later, in 1989, when the Kosovo autonomy was rescinded by Milosevic. What happened during these 600 years, pray tell? Or, at least, what happened during the last few years before 1989?

It is now difficult to write about the recent past of Kosovo without taking into account the war which is raging just now. So, it occurred to me that if I managed to find articles written in the 80s, when Kosovo was not famous, at least these would be free of any bias due to the later events.

A good friend who is also a wizard in database searching undertook the task and here is the fruit of his labours, a bunch of older articles about Kosovo. Be warned, the articles were not written for posterity. These were run-of-the-mill, "boring" articles about contemporary events. But perhaps here lies their interest, for they present the situation without any make-up. Anyway, here they are...

N.S.

http://members.tripod.com/~sarant_2/ksm.html

[Karadjordje]

homeagain balkansvet wrote:
"Be glad you didn't REALLY tick us off. The Republika Srpska is a corrupt bastard state, Moldova without the charm, and given the way things out, we would have been better off having the Croats and Muslims conquer the whole thing. As it is, we're stuck with it. And you. "

New York in 1985
Mr. Lika : for life
Mr. Fici : 80 years

The Wall Street Journal, Monday, September 9, 1985
WSJ: The ´Balkan Connection´

By Anthony M. DeStefano

NEW YORK - The informant who visited the office of U.S. Attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani last December had a chilling story to tell:

A defendant in a drug racketeering case that Mr. Giuliani was prosecuting was offering $400.000 to anyone who would kill a certain assistant U.S. attorney and a federal drug enforcement agent.

For 45 minutes Mr. Giuliani and his chief assistant, William Tendy, listened to and evaluated the tale. Five other informants later corroborated it. The threatened lawmen-assistant prosecutor Alan M. Cohen and narcotics agent Jack Delmore - were given 24-hour-a-day protection by federal marshals.

For years police and court officials in Italy have had to deal with Mafia attempts on their lives, some of which have succeeded. American gangsters have rarely dared such crimes. But certain criminal groups in the U.S. now seem less restrained. Mr. Giuliani says he has recently heard of more threats against law-enforcement officers and judges around the country than at any other time in his 15 years as a prosecutor.

A number of his colleagues share that perception. Mr. Giuliani says that he himself has been threatened.

The ´Balkan Connection´

The drug case that brought forth the threats Mr. Giuliani is concerned about involved the disruption of the so-called "Balkan connection," heroin trade conducted by among others a loosely organized group of ethnic Albanians, centered in New York. A federal probe into this drug traffic and other possible crimes, including the alleged plot to kill officials, is in progress. The drug investigation and the criminal activities of small group of Albanian-Americans have attracted little publicity.

Many Albanians came to the U.S. after World War II via Yugoslavia. Others before the war, came directly from Albania. A small, mountainous Balkan country, communist Albania is bordered on the west by the Adriatic Sea and on its other boundaries by Yugoslavia and Greece.

Conservative and industrious, many Albanian-Americans manage real estate and run small businesses, living and working in decent obscurity. An estimated 100,000 live in the New York City area. Other Albanian communities are found in Michigan, Massachusetts and Illinois.

But the small minority of Albanians who take to crime have created new and unique problems for some law-enforcement officers around the country. Language and a code of silence have protected the Albanian-American crime factions from outside penetration. "They are real secretive," says a detective in Hamtramck, Mich., a Detroit suburb where many Albanians live. He says police have tried but failed to infiltrate Albanian gangs here.

Various Crimes

Alabanian-Americans criminals, police say, are involved in everything from gun-running to counterfeiting. In New York City, a police intelligence analyst says, some ethnic Albanians living in the Bronx are involved in extortion and robbery. Federal officials believe that Albanians run gambling in certain New York ethnic clubs.

Violence within the Albanian community can be particularly brutal, whether related to organized crime or not. In Hamtramck, an Albanian, reportedly enraged by the belief that his wife had contracted a venereal disease, shot three people at a clinic and then killed himself. In some attacks, women have been slashed with knives: crowded restaurants and bars have been raked with gunfire. "They´re a wild bunch of people," says Capt. Glen McAlpine of the Shelby Township, Mich., police.

During an investigation of Albanian crime in Shelby, a bomb exploded next to the police station. A police officer also was threatened, Capt. McAlpine says.

But it is drug trafficking that has gained Albanian organized crime the most notoriety. Some Albanians, according to federal Drug Enforcement Agency officials, are key traders in the "Balkan connection," the Istanbul-to- Belgrade heroin route. While less well known than the so-called Sicilian and French connections, the Balkan route in some years may move 25% to 40 % of the U.S. heroin supply, official say.

Ties to Turks

Once serving only as couriers, some ethnic Albanians and Yugoslavs now are taking over more command of the traffic, says Andrew Fenrich, a DEA spokesman in New York. Federal agents say that Balkan crime groups are well suited for trafficking because of close historical and religious ties with the Turks, some of whom are sources of heroin.

DEA agents say the heroin flows from Turkey through Bulgaria and Greece into Yugoslavia. From there it can wind up in Rome, Brussels, The Hague and the U.S.. Once in America, the Balkan heroin is believed by officials to be distributed by some ethnic Albanians and Turks.

(Albania itself, long cut off from the most of the world by its recently deceased leader Enver Hoxha, isn´t believed by the U.S. to be involved in the drug trade.)

On the surface, at least, Skender Fici seemed to be a law-abiding businessman. He ran a Staten Island travel agency, Theresa Worldwide, which made a specialty of booking trips to Yugoslavia, where many Albanians live. He became a specialist in handling immigration paper work, and he sponsored a local ethnic Albanian soccer team.

According to federal prosecutors and a sentencing memorandum they filed in Manhattan´s Federal District Court, Mr. Fici´s travel agency made a perfect vehicle for arranging quick trips for drug dealers and couriers working the Balkan connection. One of Mr. Fici´s first shipments arrived In New York

In February 1979, according to the prosecutors´ memo. A kilogram of heroin was distributed in New York partly through the efforts of Xhevedet Lika, known as Joey Lik, who made his base on New York City´s polyglot Lower East Side. There, according to the sentencing memorandum, Mr. Lika sold the drug to other dealers from a social club located in the midst of Judaica shops and Chinese clothing stores.

By 198O, according to federal court testimony and the sentencing report, Mr. Lika was importing heroin as well as distributing it, traveling to Turkey and Yugoslavia to arrange shipments. He also allegedly dealt in cocaine with Xhevedet Mustafa, who disappeared in 1982. Mr. Mustafa had been a supporter, of the late, deposed Albanian monarch King Zog, who died in 1961.

Mr. Mustafa skipped out before his own federal trial on drug charges could take place in 1982. In September 1982, be reportedly led an unsuccessful invasion of Albania aimed at restoring the monarchy.

Mr. Hoxha said the invaders all were "liquidated," but Mr. Mustafa still is listed as a fugitive in federal court records. Mr. Lika, meanwhile, was expanding his heroin business In New York with other associates, according to federal prosecutors. He had fallen out with one of his old partners, Dujo Saljanin, who in 1991 had agreed to import several kilos of heroin for Mr. Lika and others but short-weighted the delivery by a kilo.

To resolve the discrepancy, a January 1981 meeting was held at a Park Avenue South restaurant Mr. Saljanin operated. Joey Lika and two other men, Mehmet Bici and Vuksan Vulaj, were present. Mr. Bici later testified in federal court that Mr. Vulaj pulled a gun and shot Mr. Saljanin.

"Mr. Lika had a gun, and he shot him, too," Mr. Bici testified. "I was there, too, and I shot him too. And then we just left, crossed the street," he testified.

Even with 13 bullet wounds, Mr. Saljanin lived a short while, long enough to talk. Mr. Vulaj was later shot gunned to death. Hampered by lack of cooperation in the Albanian community, as well as by difficulties with the Albanian language that made electronic surveillance useless, police and federal agents worked about three years before they broke the case in 1984.

Federal officials estimate that the group had imported more than 110 pounds of heroin with a retail or "street" value of $125 million through the Balkan connection before the ring was broken up.

Federal agents believe the drugs had been sold in New York, California, Texas and Illinois. The trail that Mr. Delmore, the DEA agent, followed led to Mr. Bici, who was then serving a sentence in a New York state prison for attempted manslaughter of his wife. Questioned by Mr. Delmore, Mr. Bici at first denied having any knowledge of drug dealing or the Saljanin murder but ultimately decided to cooperate. He was indicted along with Joey Lika, Mr. Lika´s brother Luan, Mr. Fici and others on federal charges of drug dealing and racketeering. Luan Lika was never arrested and remains a fugitive. Mr. Bici pleaded guilty to transporting heroin and to racketeering. He was sentenced to eight years and is serving time under guard in the "prisoner witness´ protection program.

The atmosphere at the trial, which began late last year, was highly charged. Early in the proceeding, Mr, Cohen, the prosecutor, mentioned that a witness claimed to have been threatened with death by Mr. Lika´s father.

(Judge Vincent Broderick kept Lika family spectators seated near the back of the courtroom.)

Another witness reported that a man outside the Manhattan courthouse had threatened her. Gjon Barisha, a prospective witness, fled before the trial, after claiming that he had been fired at. He evaded federal agents for months before being arrested on a material witness warrant last month.

Others who were to be called as witnesses hid out or refused to testify, prosecutor Cohen says, because they feared, as one of them put it, "a bullet in the head." Prosecutors allege that some witnesses perjured themselves at the trial.

Judge Broderick remarked during the trial that the case involved the most reckless disregard for human life that he had ever seen. The message wasn´t lost on federal officials, who took the threats against them seriously. Since World War II, there have been more than 800 revenge killings by Albanians in Yugoslavia and several in New York, according to Dushan Kosovich, a scholar who has studied Albanian mores.

Mr. Giuliani says of the threat against Mr. Cohen: "This was the most serious threat I have seen yet to an assistant U.S. attorney."

For three months from late 1984 into early 1985, Mr. Cohen and Mr. Delmore and their wives shared their homes with federal marshals acting as bodyguards. "You can´t believe what it is like," says Mr. Cohen, who was guarded in court-even when he went to the men´s room.

A Jury this year convicted Joey Lika and Mr. Fici on charges of racketeering conspiracy. Mr. Lika was also convicted of the more serious charge of running a criminal enterprise. To emphasize to the defendants that their opponent was the government, and not just Mr. Cohen, U S. Attorney Giuliani himself appeared in court for the sentencing in March. Mr, Lika denied in court as sentence was about to be rendered that he wanted anyone killed, and his attorney protested the government´s use of evidence from unnamed informants about the alleged threats.

Nevertheless, Mr. Lika was sentenced to life in prison, Mr. Fici to 80 years. They are appealing their convictions.

Mr. Giuliani refuses to discuss details, but he says he has learned recently that there had been an effort to fulfill an assassination contract against him and Messrs. Cohen and Delmore. "After you have been convicted," he says, "there is no rational reason to kill a prosecutor, except revenge."

While Mr. Giuliani says he now considers the threat against himself "minor," DEA agent Delmore and his family have moved-away from New York. Prosecutor Cohen is still investigating other drug dealers in New York but he, too, has a new residence.

Federal officials aren´t sure how much lasting damage they have done to the Balkan connection. Mr. Cohen says the Lika case and others, prosecuted by local authorities, have resulted in the conviction of more than 10 Albanian-American drug traffickers, and that has got to have some impact. Mr. Fenrich, the DEA spokesman, says that the Lika case made it clear that vendettas against law enforcers won´s be tolerated.

As for Joey Lika, prison may be the safest place for him. Because he testified about his part in the Saljanin killing, federal agents say he now is "in the blood" - that is, the object of a vendetta - with relatives of Mr. Saljanin.

The Wall Street Journal, "The ´Balkan Connection´", September 9, 1985

Source: http://www.balkanpeace.org/cib/kam/kosd/kosd05.shtml (<- click)

Karadjordje