The Balkans fiasco continues

The American Thinker ^ | May 29th, 2005 | Douglas Hanson

[Jane_N]

On this Memorial Day weekend, we think back and remember the valiant courage and heroic sacrifices of those United States Military men and women who gave their all for us. War is almost always bloody. But the peace it can bring soothes some of the pain for those left behind.

This is all the more reason to regret a situation in which fecklessness squanders the gains paid for in blood. A prime example is found in Kosovo, where the United Nations has played a leading role.

The Deutsche Welle yesterday relayed a report from the Brussels-based International Crises Group (ICG) that says that the UN Administration (UNMIK) in Kosovo “lacked credibility and was scrambling for an ‘escape strategy’".  Six years after Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic cried “uncle” after a NATO bombing campaign, the situation in Kosovo is deteriorating rapidly.  The ICG report said, 

"Recent weeks have seen an escalation in tension between (the two main ethnic Albanian political parties) so bitter that it risks spiraling into killings."

Readers of AT were warned last July, as US forces were withdrawing from Bosnia and downsizing its forces in Kosovo, that the EU and the UN were already in trouble trying to enforce the provisions outlined in numerous agreements and cease-fire accords. 

During the 90s, the Clinton administration looked the other way as weapons and aid from the Middle East flowed to Muslim fighters in the Balkans.  Thanks to his national security team’s deliberate deception, the Balkans region is now a “one-stop shop” for terrorists all the way from Chechnya to Afghanistan and Iraq.

It appears that UNMIK has been conducting its own cover-up regarding the situation in Kosovo.  The report said,

…the UN had been coddling ethnic Albanian politicians to the point of denying the existence of rival "party intelligence structures" which threatened to erupt into unrest as soon as the UN washed its hands of the province. "UNMIK is devoting most of its energy to producing a sufficiently convincing facade ... to allow Kosovo to pass the test that will open the final status process," it said.

This sad situation remains the quagmire the legacy media refuses to cover, and they were the ones who were instrumental in convincing a great many Americans and our politicians that US intervention was somehow in our national interest.  Meanwhile, we are still looking for the casus belli provided by the Serbs for our war in Southeastern Europe and searching for those hundreds of thousands of Balkan citizens in mass graves.  I’m sure Kofi Annan and the UN will render a full report on the results of their search any time now.

Douglas Hanson is our National Security correspondent.

[Freee-dame]

bump

[Smartaleck]

The troops will be home by Christmas Clinton said...but didn't say what year.

[Dilbert56]

I'm supremely confident that Old Europe can handle the problem through negotiations. After all, they have "soft power". Too back they have hard enemies.

[Hoplite]

Balkans region is now a “one-stop shop” for terrorists all the way from Chechnya to Afghanistan and Iraq

And this assertion has been borne out by the vast quantities of Balkan weaponry and personnel seized in Chechnya, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Or something like that, I'm sure.

Meanwhile, America continues to base it's Balkan policy on actual events, leading to much confusion amongst the ignorant and uninformed.

[FormerLib]

The Muhammedan solution is to finish the ethnic cleansing of everyone else from Kosovo, of course. It's good that people are realizing this.

Peace will only come to Kosovo with the return of the Serb Army.

[Incorrigible]

Where is the main stream media??? This is a quagmire!

[Destro]

Balkans region is now a “one-stop shop” for terrorists all the way from Chechnya to Afghanistan and Iraq

WE BUY BAG OF SEMTEX FROM al-Qaeda TERRORISTS (in Kosovo) @ http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1035808/posts

[tahotdog]

There might still be time to hand Kosovo back over to its rightful owners before the UN steps in demanding that we hand Texas and California over to Vincente Fox on the same perverted basis.

This is Slobodan Milosevic, an innocent man being tried by a so-called International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague, Holland, presumably for attempting to deport (or ethnically cleanse) albanian islammites from a Serbian province for barbaric conduct over a protracted period of time.

One assumes that the Dutch are practicing to try themselves for ethnic cleansing and genocide, since they themselves are now beginning to expell muslims from their own country, also for barbaric conduct over a protracted period of time.

One can only assume that barbaric conduct over protracted periods of time is a sort of an islammite specialty.

Now, one way to prevent yourself from being charged with hypocricy, is to start torturing people. For the same reason that nobody would ever charge Al Capone with shoplifting, nobody would ever charge somebody like Adolf Eichman or Joseph Mengele with hypocrisy.

Thus it comes out that a prosecution witness in this trial of Slobodan Milosevic stood up in the courtroom and stated that prosecutors had attempted to torture an accusation against Milosevic out of him.

Now, in an American courtroom, that would be the instantaneous end of the trial and the prosecutor's career (doing anything other than washing dishes in the courtroom cafeteria) right there.

Thus there should be a question of how Americans would want to be associated with this process even before you consider the fact that Americans soundly reject the entire premise of the ICC and have gone as far as to pass a law requiring the president of the United States to use military force to rescue any American being held by that "tribunal". In other words, Holland would face the armed might of the United States military were it to try to do to any American what it is doing to Milosevic.

My advice to the Dutch: Don't sit around trying to guess whether or not that "Hague Invasion Act" is real or some sort of a joke; go ahead, try it. Kidnap some American soldier or political official and put him on trial for some sort of war crime charge in the Hague. I can't think of anything I'd have more fun watching than that, other than having the spetznaz rescue Slobodan Milosevic of course.

[Hoplite]

The fact remains, Destro: The only substantial amount of arms going from the Balkans to any of the three conflicts listed went courtesy shipments put together by Yugoimport, which is the Serbian state-run arms dealer, and which was providing weaponry to Saddam.

And we took care of that particular problem back in 2002 - you do remember the whole "Boka Star" episode, don't you?

[Destro]

We made our deal in Kosovo, a breeding ground for fanatics with al-Qaeda links. Our contact was the deputy commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) Niam Behljulji, known as Hulji. The group were trained by Bin Laden's men. Astonishingly, we met him under the noses of the British Army and UN forces - who remain as peacekeepers following Kosovo's bloody war with Serbia. Hulji, is said to supply terrorists across Europe and has been accused of massacring Serbian women and children during the war. He even posed grinning for a photograph, holding the severed head of one his victims.

[Hoplite]

Not really supportive of the assertion made by the author in the article at the head of the thread though, is it?

Furthermore, the whole KLA-Al Qaeda links thing, upon investigation, turned out to be more the work of overactive imaginations such as yours, rather than having any basis in reality.

We've been in Kosovo for near 6 years, and though you and your friends would like to have everyone believe it's no different for our troops than Afghanistan or Iraq, prone to attack amongst a religiously fanatic hostile population, but that's not really an honest representation of the matter, is it.

[Destro]

Reads like it does. Let us put them side to side and see shall we?

Ths article: Thanks to his national security team’s deliberate deception, the Balkans region is now a “one-stop shop” for terrorists all the way from Chechnya to Afghanistan and Iraq.

My linked article: We made our deal in Kosovo, a breeding ground for fanatics with al-Qaeda links. Our contact was the deputy commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) Niam Behljulji, known as Hulji. The group were trained by Bin Laden's men. Astonishingly, we met him under the noses of the British Army and UN forces - who remain as peacekeepers following Kosovo's bloody war with Serbia. Hulji, is said to supply terrorists across Europe and has been accused of massacring Serbian women and children during the war. He even posed grinning for a photograph, holding the severed head of one his victims.

[Hoplite]

Reads like it does.

No, it doesn't.

Hulji was accused of supplying terrorists in Europe - not Iraq, Afghanistan, or Chechnya, and was merely one stop on the reporter's itinerary - they also found weapons available in Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro, but, again, these weapons are already readily available in the conflict zones listed by Hanson.

Reading is fundamental, Destro - perhaps if you'd actually comprehend what you set out to read, rather than simply skimming text for keywords, you'd get a clue.

Can you supply one instance of a weapon smuggled from the Balkans to Iraq, Afghanistan, or Chechnya, since we shut down Jugoimport?

[Destro]

Influx of al-Qaeda allies feared in Iraq (From Arabs to Albanians)

Defense officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said the United States is holding several hundred foreign fighters captured in Iraq, the majority of them Syrians. Others include Saudis, Sudanese, Egyptians, Yemenis, Moroccans, and Albanians, according to US government officials and terrorism specialists.

[Hoplite]

Not really relevant to the article at hand, nor the one you referenced, is it?

The Albanians (or Bosnians) just arent big time jihadists, regardless of how much you'd like it to be otherwise, and the Balkans isn't a source of weapons for conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, nor Chechnya.

[Destro]

Can you supply one instance of a weapon smuggled from the Balkans to Iraq, Afghanistan, or Chechnya?

Yup!

Al Qaeda trained terrorists for Kashmir: Documents (got anti-aircraft rockets from Albanians - more) One Arabic language article describes how in 1999 bin Laden received Russian anti-aircraft rockets from Bulgaria and how the rockets were smuggled through Pakistan with the help from 'Albanian separatists who are fighting in southern Serbia'.

[Hoplite]

The author of the article on this thread is talking about the Balkans supplying weapons to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Chechnya in the present time frame, and you're talking about weapons going from Bulgaria to India back in 1999.

As usual, excellent work with the links Destro.

[Destro]

Look at you scramble. I will soon post to you an article linking Albanians to Chechens and al-Qaeda in France related to the ricin scare.

[Hoplite]

And look at you, unable to provide any real linkages between Chechnya, Afghanistan, or Iraq and the Balkans, and thus blustering about posting more irrelevant links.

The attempt to tar Balkan muslims with the Al Qaeda brush failed miserably for lack of any substantiative evidence. So while you're free to continue playing your little link-o-rama game, it's all been, and shall continue to be for naught.

[Destro]

And look at you, unable to provide any real linkages between Chechnya, Afghanistan, or Iraq and the Balkans

Hoplite, reading is fundamental.

What Is France Nervous About? (The Balkan Connection)

IJAZ: Abu Masab al-Zawkawi. He was transported through southern Turkey into the Balkans and then ended up in Paris sometime just before Ramadan started...Now, that is where we come back to what President Bush said in October of last year when he identified a senior al Qaeda leader who had gone to Iraq, received medical treatment to have a leg amputated that was blown up in the Afghan bombing campaign and then proceeded to a northern Iraqi terrorist outfit. What we have not yet heard and this is what my sources are telling me over the past two or three days, is that that leader was in fact, transported through southern Turkey using Albanian mercenaries to transport him into...

[Hoplite]

Hoplite, reading is fundamental.

Wow - where have I heard that before.

If you can't understand what you're reading, or place it into context, you may as well be simply sounding out words and linking articles with the keywords which push your buttons.

I can't really say your posting style rises above that level, and somehow you keep coming away with the impression that you've carried the argument, when in reality all you've done is regurgitated material without ever demonstrating any useful knowledge derived from it.

Apart from convincing the ignorant and the stupid, your corpus of posts on the subject is but one long fool's errand - I had asked you to provide examples of weapons from the Balkans showing up in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Chechnya, and you have failed.

Again.

Maybe you should come up with a story about how you went on vacation to one of the three places in question and saw the offending Balkan originated articles yourself - that approach, first hand garbage rather than secondhand, having worked so well for you in the case of your Srebrenica "I didn't see nothing, there was no massacre" posts - LOL.

Don't put any more effort into anything on my account Destro - your opinion just doesn't matter anymore.

[Destro]

Abu Masab al-Zawkawi. He was transported through southern Turkey into the Balkans...transported through southern Turkey using Albanian mercenaries to transport him...

His name ring a bell? Denying the Albanian connection to the Iraqi al-Qaeda jihad?

[getgoing]

Have you seen add'l details on this? Albania seizes assets of Islamic Organizations http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=15543

[ma bell]

There is no govt organized affiliation with AQ anywhere in the Balkans. It is done on individual basis, splinter groups. Don't go around like a blathering idiot saying the Albanian Govt sanctions AQ links, they don't and neither does the BiH govt.

[Destro]

Where did I post there was a govt organized affiliation with AQ? Nimrod.

[ma bell]

your boring ass conspiracy theories..you are always insinuating those scenarios, buckwheat.

[Destro]

Youknow what happenes when one assumes, like you did? Ass - U-

[ma bell]

Name one of your dillusional theories that occurred? You are very delusional and incorrect in all your assumptions. Does not matter what you reply back with, I know your kind very well. I'd rather have Hoplite on my side then you, at least he served this country honorably.

[ma bell]

It might befuddle you that the Serbs of Bosnia were, as a whole, in the wrong during the Civil Wars of Bosnia. They were as a whole, correct in the RSK.

Your hero, Milosevic has you wrapped like a fool into believing he was fighting for the rights of the Serbian people.

Ask him how he procured his $175 million (his cut after the $ division) that he evenly split with Franjo and Alija?

[Destro]

Again, you are ASS-U-ming. Milosevic is a criminal to me. I am against the UN Court because even a criminal has a right to a fair trial.

It might befuddle you that Milosevic, as a whole, was wrong during the Kosovo war, but as president he and the Serbian nation were as a whole, correct in fighting the al-Qaeda allied UCK/KLA to hold on to their land of Kosovo.

[ma bell]

Now you are changing your story, which is it you standby? Give me a break, boyo.

[Destro]

Now who is a liar? When and what story did I change?

[ma bell]

You lack the insight of the politics of that region, on the ground as well. Thereby, making all YOUR ASSumptions ludicrious and child-like, so stop badgering hoplite with all your phony theories.

At least he doesn't rely on granduer thinkings, unlike you.

[ma bell]

Now who is a liar? When and what story did I change?

reread what you wrote and research your own history of writings.

Boyo, don't try and compete with me on the BiH and Kosovo Wars, you are an infant in comparision.

[ma bell]

I stand by my mafia statement, as you have no idea why things transpired as they did and do.

Where or what do you base all of your information from? the "internet"? Please... you are boring me.

[Destro]

Talk about conspiracies....

[ma bell]

ground facts, boyo in comparision to your "internet" facts. I stand by mine enough to bet my life that I am correct. Are you prepared to stand by yours the same? I bet not, though you will say "yes sir" to appease the FR masses.

[Destro]

I have FR masses to appease? Sadly, you don't post articles that back up your facts. I do - which in your bizarro world view is a bad thing.

[ma bell]

your "facts" are more like hacks, jack. Hoplite has exposed you for a fraud poster. You make SuperJoeCool and Ronly Bonly decent. At least we all knew they were idiots and they didn't hide or fight it.

Would you back up your claims with your own life if it came down to it? I know i will with my "facts". You seemed to dodge that same question last time, strike one.

[Destro]

Yea, Hoplite asks me where I get my facts and I post them and again in your bizarro world posting links to articles to support one's position is 'wrong'. Where are your links? Why don't you write an article since you have first hand info - or are you afraid of the mafia or whoever you blame for the Kosovo war?

[ma bell]

the media is bought and paid for and will not expose it. your links are fiction, hence Roy Gutman and Christiane Amanpour being your hero-writers. Go to them and ask them to verify their stories/subjects authenticity. Or, you can groundpound the local region and find out yourself. You don't have the guts to do that, armchair. You are what we call, Gara-trooper.

[joan]

Destro is much smarter than you. I believe he said, at least once here on FR, that he got a perfect score on his SATs. He is better able to see when the media is trying to mislead, even without firsthand evidence.

You have been the foolish one to believe in the zombie Kostunica who was used to bring the DOS regime into power. Now because of the puppet regime in Serbia, there is worse poverty than under sanctions and they are selling anything of value at dirt cheap prices, all with much less rebuilding effort than the Milosevic regime did in the 1 ½ years right after the bombing.

You also imply and insinuate things, but when we ask for more information you clam up like it is top secret. So maybe you better not say anything at all if you can't elaborate. For example, when you said something about the soldiers being shot in and around barracks in Serbia over the last several months. You claimed once about having some kind of inside information that it was Montenegrins who did the murders, but would not repeat anything about this when I asked some questions. So basically you leave everybody hanging, with bits of information or disinformation and we never get to learn anything more.

[ma bell]

really, is he so much smarter? hmmm, have him fax over a copy of his results. That'll resolve that debate very quickly.

I won't go into details, just the foundation for all of you to ponder and debate. This debate throws questions into the validity of all information put forward.

I'll never put out false information, only facts that are not "internet links".

Things are not what they seem to be, joan, remember that.

Question, which any of you has set foot on the ground and pounded the terrain and seen things, hmmmm?

yeah, destro is smarter then me, otay.

just remember, mark is very knowledgeable and so is paratrooper501. Listen to what they have to say.

[ma bell]

oh yes, my fax number is found on my website. If he does have such a perfect score, he'd have covet that accomplishment and have that score readily available to fax it on over to me. :) Yes, I do know his real name as well. I know a doctored document also, so I am awaiting his fax.

[montag813]

Don't go around like a blathering idiot...your boring ass conspiracy theories..you are always insinuating those scenarios

How dare you insult such a fine FReeper like Destro. You couldn't shine his shoes. It is no "theory" or "scenario" that the KLA/Albanian criminals are the single largest purveyor of heroin, and biggest pimps of teenage sexual slavery in all of Europe. These Muslim vermin are despicable, and were not worthy of a single bomb on our behalf.

[phoenix0468]

There were troops home by Christmas, I know, I relieved them In September of 2000.

[phoenix0468]

Sorry that last post was supposed to have a [sarcasm] tag.

[phoenix0468]

Why is it that every one of these break away states had "a bloody war with Serbia" and no one else? Could it be that the Serbians did want to control the former YR as has been contended? Could it be that the Serbians used ethnic cleansing tactics as has been proven in Bosnia? I know the Croatians got their hands quite bloody as well, so I am not going to defend them either, but to defend the Serbians to me seems ludicrous.