"CIA's Bastard Army"

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

*****   London Observer
March 11, 2001

'CIA'S BASTARD ARMY RAN RIOT IN BALKANS' BACKED EXTREMISTS'
by Peter Beaumont, Ed Vulliamy and Paul Beaver

The United States secretly supported the ethnic Albanian extremists 
now behind insurgencies in Macedonia and southern Serbia.

The CIA encouraged former Kosovo Liberation Army fighters to launch a 
rebellion in southern Serbia in an effort to undermine the then 
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, according to senior European 
officers who served with the international peace-keeping force in 
Kosovo (K-For), as well as leading Macedonian and US sources.

They accuse American forces with K-For of deliberately ignoring the 
massive smuggling of men and arms across Kosovo's borders.

The accusations were made in a series of interviews by The Observer. 
They emerge as America has been forced into a rapid U-turn over its 
support for Albanian extremists in Kosovo seeking a 'Greater Kosovo' 
that would include Albanian communities in Serbia and Macedonia.

In the past week ethnic Albanian guerrillas have intensified their 
campaign of attacks in the two areas, threatening a new war in the 
region which last week put US troops in the firing line in the 
Balkans for the first time.

The accusations have led to tension in K-For between the European and 
US military missions.  European officers are furious that the 
Americans have allowed guerrilla armies in its sector to train, 
smuggle arms and launch attacks across two international borders.

One European K-For battalion commander told The Observer yesterday: 
'The CIA has been allowed to run riot in Kosovo with a private army 
designed to overthrow Slobodan Milosevic.  Now he's gone the US State 
Department seems incapable of reining in its bastard army.'

He added: 'Most of last year, there was a growing frustration with US 
support for the radical Albanians.  US policy was and still is out of 
step with the other Nato allies.'

The claim was backed by senior Macedonian officials in the capital, 
Skopje.  'What has been happening with the National Liberation Army 
[which has been responsible for a series of attacks on Macedonia's 
borders in recent weeks] and the UCPMB [its sister organisation in 
southern Serbia] is very similar to what happened when the KLA was 
launched in 1995-96,' said one.

'I will say only this: the US intelligence agencies have not been honest here.'

The claims were given extra credence from an unexpected source - 
Arben Xhafari, leader of Macedonia's main Albanian party who tried to 
prevent the crisis on the border igniting an ethnic civil war inside 
Macedonia itself.

A US State Department official blamed the last administration.  There 
had now been 'a shift of emphasis'.   *****

*****   Underestimated ethnic Albanian nationalism raises fears of new war

Rory Carroll in Pristina
Monday March 12, 2001
The Guardian

High above Kosovo's broken cities, mules laden with rocket launchers, 
mines and machine guns clank through forests of oak, led by men in 
black.  The snow is melting and the knee-high mud will soon harden, 
heralding the traditional fighting season on the mountainous border 
with Macedonia.  The National Liberation Army did not feel like 
waiting.  Its automatic weapons chatter nightly and mortars crump in 
reply.  Refugees flee by day, their tractors churning into the 
valleys pulling trailers of wide-eyed infants.

The shepherds from the village of Debelde, a collection of ramshackle 
houses, have stayed with their flocks. They gaze in awe as gleaming 
A-64 Apache helicopters descend and they offer tea to the US soldiers 
who emerge.

The guerrillas who attack Macedonian troops slip back into Kosovo to 
change from black uniforms into civilian clothes.  They know Debelde 
well.  To the Americans' dismay, the people of Debelde affect to know 
them not at all.

"It is a mystery to me.  I do not know who these men are.  I never 
set eyes on them," says Misin Ferrati, 55.  Of the more than 1,000 
refugees who fled last week, not one is known to have helped identify 
the guerrillas.  Here, ethnic Albanian nationalism runs deep.

In just two weeks and with fewer than 300 men, the self-styled 
National Liberation Army has wrought havoc.  Its mine- layers and 
snipers have killed four Macedonian soldiers, ambushed convoys, 
threatened the American military and pinned down government ministers.

Twenty miles east, on Kosovo's border with Serbia, another group of 
ethnic Albanian guerrillas have been attacking Serb forces in the 
Presevo valley for the past year.  These are two fronts in an 
ultra-nationalist attempt to destabilise the Balkans, with the 
apparent aim of extending Kosovo's territory.

The fuse that has been lit may yet ignite a conflagration.  The fault 
lines of imperfect peace deals are already showing, as ethnic groups 
rediscover their dissatisfaction with the existing borders.

The west is stunned.  Balkan nightmares were supposed to have ended 
with the fall of Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president's quest 
for a greater Serbia in ashes after four failed wars.

He lost the last in 1999 after Nato intervened to defend Kosovo's 
ethnic Albanians: a triumph for which they wept in gratitude. Now 
comes the twist: Albanian nationalist militants are stirring ethnic 
rivalries in a quest for a greater Kosovo.  The liberated victims 
have become the villains.

"Betrayal does not come close.  They have spat in our faces," said a 
German officer with K-For, Nato's peacekeeping force.  In Washington 
and London, and in the offices of Nato and the UN in Kosovo's 
capital, Pristina, one question predominates: Have we created a 
monster?

"Something went very wrong and we are trying very hard to figure out 
where.  There is a feeling that we incubated this thing," says one 
American UN official.

Many agree that the west fundamentally misunderstood the threat of 
Albanian nationalism.  A series of errors, tactical and strategic, 
are blamed for allowing a small minority of Kosovans to seize the 
agenda.  A recent press conference descended into slapstick when the 
UN spokesman, Sunil Narula, staggered from one contradiction to 
another trying to explain who was doing what to contain the 
insurgencies.

K-For intelligence officers say they face a Frankenstein-like 
movement, composed of different parts; it is powerful but not very 
bright.

The guerrillas in Macedonia are mostly locals who served in the 
disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army.  Its Albanian acronym UCK, is the 
same as the National Liberation Army.  They are said to want to annex 
the north and west of Macedonia, which is dominated by ethnic 
Albanians.

By provoking a Macedonian over-reaction - which has yet to happen - 
the rebels hope to radicalise the ethnic Albanians, who form almost a 
third of the former Yugoslav republic's 2m population but complain of 
suffering discrimination at the hands of the Slav majority.

However, in recent statements the guerrillas said they wanted only 
equal rights in a reformed Macedonia.  Talk of annexation, they said, 
was humbug perpetuated by Skopje to distract from its record on civil 
rights.

To the east, in the Presevo valley, its sister organisation, the 
UCPMB, has up to 2,000 fighters in the three-mile buffer zone set up 
between Kosovo and Serbia after the 1999 war.  They have mined, shot 
and mortared Serb forces, killing 34.

This group wants the boundary changed so that 70,000 ethnic Albanians 
in Serbia are included in Kosovo.  Nato's decision to allow the 
Yugoslav army back into the zone has, as the extremists expected, 
outraged Kosovans.  "You hear generals talking about giving the 
extremists a wake-up call, but really it's the other way round," a 
British officer said.

Kosovo's constitutional limbo - it is technically part of Serbia but 
is a K-For protectorate - has created a vacuum in which frustration 
flourishes.  It is dawning on the rebels that they may have wider 
support than first realised.

Eric Torch, an aid worker, believes a key mistake made by the west 
was failing to appreciate the power of ethnic Albanian nationalism. 
"Albanians trace their lineage to the Illyrans who controlled the 
territory in the 11th century BC.  Underground schools during 
Milosevic's rule inculcated ethnic hatred into generations," he says.

Lirak Celaj smiles when asked if the genie is out of the bottle.  An 
actor who studied in Britain and the director of Pristina's main 
theatre, he is also an ex-KLA fighter and spokesman.

"We will be a problem.  We will remain a threat to stability because 
for us the status quo is unfair," he says.  He believes that 
oppression in Macedonia and southern Serbia requires a violent 
response because peaceful means have failed.

Until the break up of Yugoslavia 10 years ago the region's ethnic 
Albanians were in one state.  Mr Celaj's family is from Montenegro, 
his wife is from Macedonia.  But unlike Serb nationalists who wanted 
to reconquer all their historical territory, Mr Celaj rules out 
unification with Albania, because the state is too backward.  For now 
he will settle for those areas where ethnic Albanians are in a 
majority today.

He cannot believe that the US and Britain have switched allegiance to 
Belgrade.  "I think some European countries may be against us because 
now we are losing the propaganda battle, but not London and 
Washington," he says.

Moderate Kosovan leaders such as Ibrahim Rugova have condemned the 
guerrillas for damaging the quest for independence.  Mr Celaj is 
unconcerned, believes independence is inevitable, probably within 
five years.

But despite their thumping endorsement in the municipal elections 
last October, it is not the moderates who hold the balance of power.

Since the day it arrived K-For has failed to control Kosovo.  Its 
failure to disarm the KLA, protect the Serb minority and build a 
multi-ethnic society has created a climate in which extremists 
flourish.  For almost a year it ignored intellectuals who urged a 
crackdown on KLA members who seized assets and set up criminal 
networks.

"Now it's too late, the moderates won the election, but those who 
smuggle and run the rackets have the real power," one officer serving 
there admits.

Yesterday's Observer reported that the CIA encouraged rebellion in 
southern Serbia to undermine Milosevic but lost control after his 
fall.

Many Kosovans accuse the UN police force of incompetence and 
corruption.  It has failed to establish the rule of law, allowing 
gangsters and militants to intimidate at will.  A journalist from 
Koha Dittore, one of the few newspapers to resist such pressure, said 
freedom of speech was evaporating because of threats and 
assassinations.

Pristina remains broken: there are powercuts, building facades gape 
open, and rubbish lies uncollected.  Day and night gangs of 
unemployed young men patrol the main Mother Theresa Street.  Those 
with cash drink in Skifterat, a dingy basement bar where the bouncers 
are ex-KLA fighters in black berets and combat boots.

At a rickety table three friends, Sabit, Besin and Bardh, all in 
their early 20s, discuss politics.  "If the Albanians in Macedonia 
all rose up tomorrow I'd go down to fight, but until then no way," 
Sabit says.

His friends nod.  In fact the guerrillas, who are intensely 
clan-based, are unlikely to trust such outsiders, but Kosovo is a 
vital supply depot and base.

The drinkers here, unusually for Pristina, do not speak English.  "No 
need.  We won't need to leave our land again," says Emrush, 31, a 
chemist.  On a napkin he draws a perfect map of his land: A greater 
Kosovo encompassing chunks of Macedonia and Serbia.   *****