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.