Posted on 07/09/2004 7:38:49 AM PDT by Peach
Freepers - I am in need of some information about the war in Bosnia.
1. How many countries participated in the military action? I understand Wesley Clark claims in his book it was the largest coalition ever assembled; is that true?
2. Was there explicit UN approval?
3. My recollection is that we were told there would be hundreds of thousands of bodies found. What have we found to date?
Thanks for the help.
Not having Hoppy for a pal isn't a consequence but a benefit of living an honest life.
Again, don't tread where you lack knowledge. You may not like what you do not know. I might disappoint you.
I am your brother in arms! Hug me, hold me, squeeze me ohh sooo tight!
Former Lib, I doubt he was active, maybe a National Guardsman if anything. Either that, he was such a shtbird that they TAD'd him back to the states.
OK..so, when will you pursue your Albanian-Americans who were on the LaGardia Airport tarmac as seen on Fox/CNN awaiting to board the flight to Albania to fight alongside the Al-Queada v. the Serbian Army?
a) A person who is a national of the United States whether by birth or naturalization, shall lose his nationality by voluntarily performing any of the following acts with the intention of relinquishing United States nationality--
(2) taking an oath or making an affirmation or other formal declaration of allegiance to a foreign state or a political subdivision thereof, after having attained the age of eighteen years; or
That an individual who claims to have served in both the USMC and the VRS held numerous user accounts here on FR, and that the individual in question is synonymous with a charity called "Pedal in Peace" and that the posts claiming said charity as his own tie all the user accounts together?
ma bell je Pedal in Peace.
Pedal in Peace je smokegenerator
smokegenerator je Marine
smokegenerator je VRS
And as demonstrated, an American could not have been a member of the VRS during the time you were without either renouncing his US citizenship, or committing treason.
Hey, don't ask RBJoe for pics, he'd not want to whore me out for the world to see!
Now it is your time to shine for the world and provide PROOF I committed treason.
Greg Dority/Fusion padding your pocketbook again with your Pro-Albanian swinging?
Again, I say again, what you don't know would suprise you, gomer.
I see, you are against the Orthodox Churches. You are doing what is in your limited power to disparage any Orthodox Relief Aid and that is dispicable. We should have known as you never quarrel over religion, as I am sure you are feverishly Pro-Choice. Pretty disgusting that you are in favor of murderers.
You know, you claim to have been marine 'special forces' 'cuz you were showing an advanced party of SF guys on the IFOR deployment where the local minefields were?
How you could have known were the local minefields were, when the only Marines who had ever been to Bosnia at that point were the ones who rescued Scott O'Grady remains for you to explain.
That you also claimed to have taken a field jacket off of an HVO prisoner plants you squarely in the ranks of the VRS, Z-boy.
So I don't have to show where you "took up arms against the US armed forces" - you've admitted to being a member of the VRS in your own statements. That the VRS was in arms against US armed forces is a matter of record.
So it's then incumbent upon you to show where you renounced your citizenship to avoid Sec 2381.
Now we both know you didn't renounce your citizenship, so that can only mean one thing.
Right?
Right.
Based on your love affair with the Albanians and we shall not forget your affinity for all Balkan muslims. We have credence that your Albo boys and Bosnian Muslims had and currently have Al-Queda members within their ranks. We do know that Al-Q and the USA have been engaged in a secret war all those years!
Therefore, that is all mute and we do, or unknowingly suspect the US and Serbs have helped each other in global terrorism intel sharing, making your point of enemy combatents moot in the end.
I, being an American citizen, place you under cyber-citizens arrest. Shall you report to Ft Irwin or is Camp Pendleton closer for your voluntary turn-in? Be sure to bring only your clothing, no valuables, leave all weapons and drug paraphanelia or other contraband at home, or it will confiscated and you will be charged in accordance to the UCMJ. Any medication needed will be given if needed, upon a facility medical examination to determine your health and fitness being. Razumish?
During the war in former Yugoslavia, over 5,000 ethnic Albanians fought together with Croat and Muslim military formations. When the policy of non-violent resistance failed to make any progress, some ethnic Albanians turned to violence. Rugova's position began to be undermined when the Kosovo Question was left off the agenda at the Dayton Peace talks in November 1995. Younger Kosovars increasingly began to ask why they should hold fast to nonviolence when the Bosnian Serbs were rewarded for their violence and brutality with their own quasi-state within Bosnia. The Kosovo Liberation Army -- KLA in English acronym or UCK in the Albanian acronym -- first appeared in Macedonia in 1992. In 1995 the beginnings of armed resistance to the Serbs appeared, when the KLA carried out isolated attacks on Serbian police. The KLA appeared for the first time in public in June 1996, assuming reponsibility for a series of acts of sabotage committed against the police stations and policemen in Kosovo and Metohija. After these bombings, Serb authorities named it a terrorist organization. Since 1997 the Kosovo Liberation Army has conducted attacks on Serbian police and other officials. They did not attack Yugoslave Army military facilities, rather, their emphasis was ambushes of police patrols and attacks on Albanians who collaborated with Serbian authorities.
The Kosovo Liberation Army is not a unified military organization subordinated to a political party or civil authority, but rather functions as a guerilla movement consisting of lightly armed fighters. However, its members carry visible insignia and execute the assignments of their command in a disciplined way. The KLA's strength has swelled from about 500 active members at the beginning of 1998 to a force of at least a few thousand men [though some estimates suggest that there are as many as 12,000 to 20,000 armed guerrillas]. The KLA is organized in small compartmentalized cells rather than a single large rebel movement. The KLA's strength is apparently divided between a maneuverable strike nucleus of a few hundred trained commandos, and the much larger number of locally organized members active throughout the region. The KLA typically performs actions in smaller groups, at times as few as three to five men.
Many members of KLA units are professionally trained, and include former Yugoslav army soldiers. The group functions very professionally underground, due in part to fact that some of its leaders are former members of UDBA [Internal State Security Service], the army and the police.
The Kosovo Liberation Army is alleged by Serbia to include about 1,000 foreign mercenaries from Albania, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina (Muslims) and Croatia. Among the mercenaries it is alleged that there also British and German instructors. Most of these mercenaries are said to be Albanian nationals, especially former Albanian army officers, policemen and members of the state security forces. According to Serbian accounts, the primary KLA training camps in Albania are Ljabinot near Tirana, Tropoja near the Yugoslav-Albanian border, Kuks and Bajram Curi near the Yugoslav-Albanian border. Serbia claims that these locations are also the headquarters for the command and units of the Albanian army and police for the northeastern part of Albania and the centers for recruiting followers of the overthrown Albanian president Sali Berisha.
The KLA initially conducted hit-and-run attacks against the Serbian special forces police operating in the province. Typically, KLA units fire on Serbian patrols, trying to draw them into the woods where they will be ambushed. Initially, the buildings and personnel of the Serbian Special Police were not targeted, nor were high police officials and police vehicles. After the March 1998 Drenica massacre the KLO engaged in a wider scope of actions. In April and May 1998 there were a number of attacks on police units and facilities and attacks on the Military Police working with the Serbian police. In May and June 1998 larger-scale actions consisted actions to defend villages on important crossroads in order to form in the west of Kosovo [between Pec and Djakovica] a line of liberated territories and to disrupt communications between local police and Army units and the main forces in eastern Kosovo. The Yugoslav Army responded to these actions with heavy weaponry. Other KLA actions in this period included attacks on roads to isolate dispersed police stations and control points needing daily supplies.
Until March 1998 the KLO used only light arms, but more recently KLA forces have been armed with assault rifles, along with Ambrust and Soviet-designed RPG shoulder-fired anti-tank rocket launchers, mortars, recoilless rifles, anti-aircraft machineguns, and mortars. The KLA equipment includes some weapons from the Second World War, such as PPS-41 automatic rifles and the MP-40, "Mosine-Nagant", though the inventory of modern arms, ammunition, telecommunication equipment, and other supplies is much larger. The KLA has obtained weapons used by the former Yugoslav People's Army, as well as other weapons produced in China and Singapore.
The KLA is said to have two command centers -- one is abroad, and the other center is in Pristina, where the KLA has a well-developed logistics base. Direct contact with Kosovo and Metohija is maintained via Gnjilane, Vitina, Glogovac and Pristina. It is evident that the KLA has a well-organized surveillance apparatus, and that an organized word of mouth messenger service is operating to supplement established radio communications links.
Both Rugova and the KLA have insisted upon independence for Kosovo. The KLA's professed long-term goal is to unite the Albanian populations of Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania into a greater Albania. Until recently, the Kosovars viewed granting Kosovo the status of a third republic within Yugoslavia as a transitional stage in achieving Kosovo's independence. This option was attractive to the international community as it did not result in changing the international border. But Serbia rejected this concept, taking the position that Kosovo remained Serbia's internal matter. And by mid-1998 the Kosovar view of this concept was equally negative, with an international protectorate and demilitarization seen as interim steps towards independence.
Aside from causing casualties and deaths, the armed resistance provided Milosevic the pretext for his brutal crack-down. In late February 1998, following an unprecedented series of clashes in Kosovo between Serbian police forces and members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), Serbian police raided villages in Kosovo's Drenica region, a KLA stronghold. The police reportedly burned homes and killed dozens of ethnic Albanians in these raids. Thousands of ethnic Albanians in Pristina protested Serb police actions, and were subsequently attacked by the police with tear gas, water cannons, and clubs. As a result of the fighting, thousands of Kosovar Albanians were displaced from their homes, many taking refuge with host families, while a smaller proportion (several thousand) took to the hills and forests.
Over the summer of 1998 large-scale fighting broke out, resulting in the displacement of some 300,000 people. Since July 1998 Milosevic steadily increased the level of violence against the Albanian majority. Estimates put the number of deaths at several hundred. The local economy collapsed due to the Serbian embargo which began in early 1998. A ceasefire was agreed in October 1998 which enabled refugees to find shelter, averting an impending humanitarian crisis over the winter. A Verification Mission was deployed under the auspices of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). However, violence continued and the situation worsened significantly in January 1999. A peace conference, held in Paris, broke up on 19 March with the refusal of the Yugoslav delegation to accept a peaceful settlement. At 1900 hours GMT on 24 March, NATO forces began air operations over the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Milosevic's estimate that he could wipe out the KLA in five to seven days was wrong. As of early May 1999 the KLA had increased in size to as much as 8,000 or 10,000, an increase of several thousand combatants. The number of supporters has also risen to about 20,000. As Serbian military units are destroyed or driven into hiding by NATO air operations, there is a resurgence of UCK activity. The hundreds of thousands of internally displaced Kosovar Albanians are taking shelter in locations which often coincide with many of the UCK controlled areas, and it appears that some sanctuary is being provided for these people within these areas. The KLA is receiving recruits from the refugee population, in Albania primarily, and they are training aggressively. They have a broader base of support than they had before, and they continue to acquire or gather weapons, some of which they gather from Serb forces if they win the engagements. The KLA is attacking, blowing up vehicles, and inflicting fatalities on the VJ and the MUP with increasing regularity. Generally the KLA can't move freely, and they do not control extensive amounts of territory.
The KLA increased rather dramatically in size in the first two months of Operation Allied Force. On March 24th the US Government estimated that they had a total of 6,000 to 8,000 people in Kosovo and Albania with perhaps 2,000 to 4,000 in Kosovo -- up to half may have been in Kosovo at any one time. By late May the US Government estimated that the KLA had grown to a total of 17,000 to 20,000 in both Kosovo and Albania, with perhaps as many as 15,000 in Kosovo at any one time. According to US Government estimates, KLA training had improved, the quality of the recruits was getting better, and the quality of weaponry was also getting better. To the extent the KLA succeeded in battle, they were able to acquire some weapons from the Serb forces -- both the army forces [VJ] and the special police [MUP]. The KLA also continued to acquire weapons on world markets.
==============================
Bin Laden’s Balkan Buddies
Intriguingly, the term "Bojinka," meaning "loud bang," is neither Arabic nor Tagalog (a Filipino dialect), as one might suspect. Instead, it is a Serbo-Croatian term with Turkish roots — a small but potentially significant connecting link to the Balkans, a region now infested with radical Muslim terrorist cells loyal to both Osama bin Laden and revolutionary Iran. Following the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the Serbian province of Kosovo was turned into a UN-supervised radical Muslim enclave under the rule of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In February 1998, Robert Gelbard, the Clinton administration’s special envoy for Kosovo, told Agence France Presse that the KLA "is, without any questions, a terrorist group."
Ralf Mutschke, assistant director for Interpol’s Criminal Intelligence Directorate, pointed out in December 2000 congressional testimony: "In 1998, the U.S. State Department listed the KLA as a terrorist organization, indicating that it was financing its operations with money from the international heroin trade and loans from Islamic countries and individuals, among them allegedly Osama bin Laden." Mutschke pointed out that bin Laden lent the KLA one of his military commanders, who led "an elite KLA unit during the Kosovo conflict."
On August 24, 1998, shortly after U.S. cruise missiles struck purported bin Laden assets in Sudan and Afghanistan, the terror chieftain’s World Islamic Front (WIF) issued a communiqué urging its followers to "direct your attacks to the American army and her allies, the infidels." The KLA was among the al-Qaeda-connected groups to which that directive was issued. Nonetheless, in late 1998, the Clinton administration repealed its description of the KLA as a terrorist group, and began to supply it with assistance and training via the CIA.
By any definition, the KLA must be considered one of the most loathsome terrorist groups in existence. In the March 28, 1999 New York Times, Balkans correspondent Chris Hedges pointed out that the group’s leadership echelons were occupied by "diehard Marxist-Leninists (who were bankrolled in the old days by the Stalinist dictatorship next door in Albania)" as well as descendants of World War II-era fascist militias.
Writing in the May-June 1999 issue of Foreign Affairs, Hedges pointed out that the KLA’s ideology displays "hints of fascism on one side and whiffs of communism on the other," and its leadership includes the heirs and descendants of "the Skanderbeg volunteer SS division raised by the Nazis … [who] took part in the shameful roundup and deportation of [Kosovo’s] few hundred Jews during the Holocaust."
Observatire Geopolitique Des Drogues (a counter-narcotics bureau working with the European Commission) reported that "heroin shipment and marketing networks are taking root among ethnic Albanian communities in Albania, Macedonia, and the Kosovo province of Serbia, in order to finance large purchases of weapons destined … for the brewing war in Kosovo.
Pascal Auchlin of Switzerland’s National Center for Scientific Research corroborated that analysis: "Here and in a half-dozen other Western countries, there is now an ant’s trail of individual drug traffickers that leads right to Kosovo."
The Balkan connection reaches into Albanian expatriate communities in the United States. According to an essay published by criminologist Gus Xhudo in the Spring 1996 issue of Transnational Organized Crime, Albanian mobsters have been involved in "drug and refugee smuggling, arms trafficking, contract killing, kidnaping, false visa forgery, and burglary." Between 1985 and 1995, wrote Xhudo, "authorities estimated that 10 million U.S. dollars in cash and merchandise had been stolen from some 300 supermarkets, ATM machines, jewelry stores, and restaurants" by Albanian gangsters, a healthy cut of which was sent to fund the KLA’s terror campaign.
During the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia, thousands of refugees from Kosovo arrived in the United States. At the same time, thousands of Kosovo Albanians living in U.S. cities enlisted in the KLA. The April 20, 1999 Washington Times reported that the call to enlist in the KLA "is considered obligatory for all men ages 18 to 55. Only those who are sick or who can contribute financially to the KLA are considered exempt." Albanian émigrés from Philadelphia, Detroit, New York, Chicago, and other U.S. cities repaired to the KLA banner, joining thousands more from Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and other European nations.
Little attention was paid to this now largely forgotten display of the KLA’s potential strength as an al-Qaeda fifth column within the United States. Immediately following 9-11, intelligence analyst Yossef Bodansky, author of Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America, told THE NEW AMERICAN that the KLA and its allies in the Albanian Mafia compose a vital part of bin Laden’s terrorist apparatus within the United States.
"The role of the Albanian Mafia, which is tightly connected to the KLA, is laundering money, providing technology, safe houses, and other support to terrorists within this country," Bodansky explained to THE NEW AMERICAN. "This isn’t to say that the Albanians themselves would carry out the actual terrorist operations. But there are undoubtedly ‘sleeper’ agents within the Albanian networks, and they can rely upon those networks to provide them with support. In any case, a serious investigation of the Albanian mob isn’t going to happen, because they’re ‘our boys’ — they’re protected.
* "The role of the Albanian Mafia, which is tightly connected to the KLA, is laundering money, providing technology, safe houses, and other support to terrorists within this country," Bodansky explained to THE NEW AMERICAN. "This isn’t to say that the Albanians themselves would carry out the actual terrorist operations. But there are undoubtedly ‘sleeper’ agents within the Albanian networks, and they can rely upon those networks to provide them with support. In any case, a serious investigation of the Albanian mob isn’t going to happen, because they’re ‘our boys’ — they’re protected.
HMMMM...havent I been right along, Alblite?
(1995)Upper Eastern Bosnia Tuzla-Zvornik region- VRS boys shadowed USA boys as they trudged through the "Yellow Brick Road" that the venerable SerbianFire exposed years ago. Maybe it is the illicit dealings the jihads have there that you tacitly support.
The big picture is well-known within the SF world and the shooters on the ground who the bad guys are and the good guys (Serbs) are.
Next time you make your way from Banja Luka to Omarska/Trnoplje-Novi Grad, stop by the SFOR base. I"m sure the Italian Caliberi (sp?) and British will gleefully reeducate you on their dealings with the regional Muslims and Croatians~ not good at all, always something everyday with them. Strange how they love and always lovingly enjoyed working with the Serbs, whom they call very adapt and competent with anti-terror operations.
|adapt| should read adept
The only important thing here is that given your previous posts, you cannot deny with any veracity that you served in the VRS when the VRS was engaged in hostilities with the armed forces of the United States of America.
Given that, you had the choice of either renouncing your US citizenship, which we both know you didn't do, or of becoming a traitor, which is exactly what you did do.
And all you can do by way of response is waste server space blubbering about the crimes of others, real or imagined, hoping it will erase the stain of your own.
I am indebted to you for running ma bell (aka SKS snajperi) to earth on this thread, so I just thought you might like a head's up as to what kind of individual you were really dealing with.
I'll say this besides your being a schmuck, you have no concept how easily you are misled. Your intelligence is your weakness.
Besides, I'm waiting til this Fall to have my knee scoped so I am oversees deployable. I'll be posting either in Iraq or Afghanistan, doubt it as I'll be too busy chasing terrorists around that served with the Bosnian Muslims against the original anti-terrorist unit, called the Serbian Army.
Why don't you re-up for another round of US Army duty? You speak so bravely behind your monitor, can't handle the rigors of the daily routine, or it's beneath you?
I hope you have physical proof of your allegations besides what was typed on a forum....laadeee dahhhh... sorry, but that has already been questioned and cleared... :)
Semper Fi,
The Big Z
Bog Beast
p.s - MOP 4 SUCKS!
Otherwise, can it, you're embarrassing yourself.
Where is your charge into calling for traitorious actions against the Albanian-Americans for joining the KLA in 1999-current?
You are a hypocrit, boy. There is nothing more dispicable then your kind, one who sets double standards.
There is not one person on here who is more even-handed then I am and you are sinking further into the bog beast1.
Your rants continue when proven facts I have stated are publicized on here which blows away your "Racak" storyline, being almost good enough for an Emmy nomination. Well, you pulled a Susan Lucci, unfortunately your not as pretty as she.
All your testimony is from biased Pro-NATO puppets. Anyone who has been there from here is automatically tagged as an ergo or liar/Serbo-Nazi. You know what you need to do and I refrain from writing it....
BTW, how about donating to my Cycling Challenge? It's a great cause, giving food, medical care to people who were run out of homes by your Albanian friends, the KLA. You created and caused it, you need to provide aid, boy.
Do you mean the assertions that you made in the posts I referenced, or the passages from the US civil code?
This isn't that difficult - either you're a liar, or you're a traitor.
Make your choice.
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