Kosovo and Washington’s Strategic Agenda for Europe and Eurasia
By F. William Engdahl, 3 March 2008
The declaration of Kosovo independence has been rapidly greeted with official diplomatic recognition by Washington and select EU countries including Germany. That independence and its recognition, unfortunately, openly violate UN resolutions for Kosovo and make a farce of the entire UN rule of international law. The new regime is headed by man identified by Interpol as well as German BND intelligence reports as a criminal, a boss of Kosovo organized crime responsible for drug running, extortion and prostitution. The important question is why Washington has pressured Europe into accepting the travesty now called the Republic of Kosovo?
Kosovo is a tiny parcel of land in one of the most strategic locations in all Europe from a standpoint of US military objectives of controlling oil flows and political developments from the oil-rich Middle East to Russia and Western Europe. The current US-led recognition of the self-declared Republic of Kosovo is a continuation of US policy for the Balkans since the illegal 1999 US-led NATO bombing of Serbia, a NATO “out-of-area” deployment never approved by the UN Security Council, allegedly on the premise that Milosevic’s army was on the verge of carrying out a genocidal massacre of Kosovo Albanians.
Some months before the US-led bombing of Serbian targets, one of the
heaviest bombings since World War II, a senior US intelligence official in
private conversation told Croatian officers in Zagreb about Washington’s
strategy for former Yugoslavia. According to these reports, communicated
privately to this author, the Pentagon goal was to take control of Kosovo in
order to secure a military base to control the entire southeast European region
down to the Middle East oil lands.
Since June 1999 when the NATO Kosovo Force (KFOR) occupied Kosovo, then
an integral part of then-Yugoslavia, Kosovo has been under a United Nations
mandate, UN Security Council Resolution 1244. Russia and China also agreed to
that mandate, which specifies the role of KFOR to ensure cessation of
inter-ethnic fighting and atrocities between the Serb minority population,
others and the Kosovo Albanian Islamic majority. Under 1244 Kosovo would remain
part of Serbia pending a peaceful resolution of its status. That UN Resolution
has been ignored by the US, German and EU parties.
Germany’s and Washington’s prompt recognition of Kosovo’s independence in
February 2008, significantly, came days after elections for President in Serbia
confirmed pro-Washington Boris Tadic had won a second four year term. With
Tadic’s post secured, Washington could count on a compliant Serbian reaction to
its support for Kosovo. To date that seems the case.
The US strategic agenda for Kosovo is primarily military, and its prime
focus is against Russia and for control of oil flows from the Caspian Sea to
the Middle East into Western Europe. By declaring its independence, Washington
gains a weak state which it can fully control. So long as it remained a part of
Serbia, that NATO military control would be politically insecure. Today Kosovo
is controlled as a military satrapy of NATO, whose KFOR has 16,000 troops there
for a tiny population of 2 millions.
US-NATO military control of Kosovo serves several purposes for
Washington’s greater geo-strategic agenda. First it enables greater US control
over potential oil and gas pipeline routes into the EU from the Caspian and
Middle East as well as control of the transport corridors linking the EU to the
Black Sea. It also protects the multi-billion dollar heroin trade, which,
significantly, has grown to record dimensions in Afghanistan according to UN
narcotics officials, since the US occupation. Kosovo and Albania are major heroin
transit routes into Europe. According to a just-released 2008 US State
Department annual report on international narcotics traffic, several key drug
trafficking routes pass through the Balkans. Kosovo is mentioned as a key point
for the transfer of heroin from Turkey and Afghanistan to Western Europe. Those
drugs reportedly flow under the watchful eye of the Thaci government.
Since its dealings with the Meo tribesmen in Laos during the Vietnam era,
the CIA has protected narcotics traffic in key locations in order partly to
finance its covert operations. The scale of international narcotics traffic
today is such that major US banks such as Citigroup are reported to derive a
significant share of their profits from laundering the proceeds.
Immediately after the bombing of Serbia in 1999 the Pentagon seized a
1000 acre large parcel of land in Kosovo at Uresevic near the border to
Macedonia, and awarded a contract to Halliburton when Dick Cheney was CEO
there, to build one of the largest US overseas military bases in the world,
Camp Bondsteel, with more than 7000 troops today.
One of the notable features of the indecent rush by Washington and other
states to immediately recognize the independence of Kosovo is the fact that they
well know its present government and both major political parties are in fact
run by Kosovo Albanian organized crime.
Hashim Thaci, President of Kosovo and head of the Democratic Party of
Kosovo, is the former leader of the terrorist organization which the US and
NATO trained and called the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, or in Albanian, UCK.
In 1997, President Clinton’s Special Balkans Envoy, Robert Gelbard described
the LKA as, “without any question a terrorist group.” It was far more. It was a
klan-based mafia, impossible therefore to infiltrate, which controlled the
underground black economy of Kosovo. Today the Democratic Party of Thaci,
according to European police sources, retains its links to organized crime.
A February 22, 2005 67 page German BND report, labeled Top Secret, which
has been leaked, stated, “Über die Key-Player (wie z. B. Haliti, Thaci,
Haradinaj) bestehen engste Verflechtungen zwischen Politik, Wirtschaft und
international operierenden OK-Strukturen im Kosovo. Die dahinter stehenden
kriminellen Netzwerke fördern dort die politische Instabilität. Sie haben kein
Interesse am Aufbau einer funktionierenden staatlichen Ordnung, durch die ihre
florierenden Geschäfte beeinträchtigt werden können.“ (OK=Organized
Crime) (Translation:
“Through the key players—for example Thaci, Haliti, Haradinaj—there is the
closest interlink between politics, the economy and international organized
crime in Kosovo. The criminal organizations in the background there foster
political instability. They have no interest at all in the building of a
functioning orderly state that could be detrimental to their booming business.”
The KLA began action in 1996 with the bombing of refugee camps housing
Serbian refugees from the wars in Bosnia and Croatia. The KLA repeatedly called
for the “liberation” of areas of Montenegro, Macedonia and parts of Northern
Greece. Thaci is hardly a figure of regional stability to put it mildly.
The 39 year old Thaci was a personal protégé of Clinton Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright during the 1990s, when he was a mere 30-year old
gangster. The KLA was supported from the outset by the CIA and the German BND.
During the 1999 war the KLA was directly supported by NATO. At the time he was
picked up by the USA in the mid-1990s, Thaci was founder of the Drenica Group,
a criminal syndicate in Kosovo with ties to Albanian, Macedonian and Italian
organized mafias. A classified January
2007 report prepared for the EU Commission, labeled “VS-Nur für den
Dienstgebrauch” was leaked to the media. It detailed the organized criminal
activity of KLA and its successor Democratic Party under Thaci.
The question then becomes, why are Washington, NATO, the EU and inclusive
and importantly, the German Government, so eager to legitimize the breakaway
Kosovo? The answer is not hard to find. A Kosovo run internally by organized
criminal networks is easy for NATO to control. It insures a weak state which is
far easier to bring under NATO domination.
The Thaci dependence on US and NATO good graces insures Thaci’s
government will do what it is asked. That, in turn, assures the US a major
military gain consolidating its permanent presence in the strategically vital
southeast Europe. It is a major step in consolidating NATO control of Eurasia,
and gives the US a large swing its way in the European balance of power. Little
wonder Moscow has not welcomed the development, nor have numerous other states.
The US is literally playing with dynamite in the Balkans.