Posted on 09/20/2001 9:27:21 AM PDT by Pay now bill Clinton
September 20, 2001
A week after the terrorist strikes at Manhattan and the Pentagon, the United States was still mourning and gearing up for revenge. But as all eyes and ears of the wounded Empire focused on Afghanistan, another possible field of battle waited with distinct uneasiness for the heralded crusade against terrorism to begin unfolding.
After a decade of internecine warfare over territory, occasionally with strong religious overtones, the Balkans is likely to become a battlefield again. For though this may come as news to most Westerners, the United States counted on assistance from Iran, Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda and the Saudi Arabian Wahhabi Muslim movement to the militants and self-declared governments of Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.
The litany of U.S. connections with Islamic militants during the Bosnian war (1992-95) is long and disheartening. The US actively supported the Muslim-led government of Bosnia-Herzegovina in its fight against Bosnian Serbs and Croats, even though it enlisted several thousand foreign mujahedeen. These fighters committed terrible atrocities against Serbs and Croats, none of which have ever been prosecuted. After the Dayton Peace Agreement of 1995, some of these Islamic warriors were sent home, but many remained, marrying Bosnian Muslim women and taking Bosnian citizenship. One of them, bin Laden's close associate Mehrez Aodouni, was arrested in Turkey two years ago while on his way to Chechnya with a Bosnian passport.
Furthermore, the U.S. had allowed Iran to gain influence in Bosnia and Croatia by knowingly allowing Teheran to ship weapons to both regimes in direct violation of the UN arms embargo in 1994-95. After the war, millions of American taxpayer dollars paid for new equipment and weapons for the Bosnian Muslim Army, while Iranian spies and the mujahedeen plotted to assassinate the Pope and blow up the NATO peacekeepers' HQ in Sarajevo (which was to be blamed on the Serbs).
Bosnia's postwar destitution and kleptocratic governments have contributed to the readiness of many young Muslims to join the Wahhabi movement, aggressively exported by Saudi Arabia. The Wahhabis' practice of austere Islam completely foreign to Bosnia has already destroyed many Bosnian Muslim families, as their daughters were married off in their teens and their sons joined the Jihad in Chechnya and Kosovo, many never to return. This, and more, is well-documented by the Bosnian Muslim and foreign press.
Efforts to create a Greater Albania have been less overtly Islamic than the struggle in Bosnia, mainly because the KLA in Kosovo and Macedonia focused more on the Albanians' ethnic, and less on their religious, identity. Nonetheless, both the al-Qaeda and the Wahhabis have been involved with the KLA and inside Albania proper over the past decade.
During NATO's assault in 1999, Belgrade made serious allegations that the KLA was connected to bin Laden's terrorist network and the muhajedeen movement in general, but the US was not willing to listen. Now these allegations are confirmed by none other than the CIA. More than two years after bombing Serbia on behalf of the KLA, US officials are now quoted by the Washington Times :
"Since the mid-1990s, bin Laden associates have been based in Tirana, Albania's capital, as well as in at least two other towns in the small, formerly communist nation… Islamic radicals, including supporters of bin Laden, have been supporting Albanian rebels fighting in the region, including members of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Intelligence officials have said there are reports that KLA members have been trained at bin Laden training camps in Afghanistan."
The US government has not only known about this all along, but has enlisted the terrorists as a useful weapon against the Serbs, and recently the Macedonians as well. It certainly made sense to join forces with a CIA-sponsored movement in a fight against the common enemy. With the events of September 11, however, that picture is likely to change.
Compared to the authors of September 11, Slobodan Milosevic is no threat to the United States. After his fall, Serbia and Yugoslavia have been reduced to the margins of the Balkans, impotent and obsequiously subservient to US/NATO commands. Yet the Empire's victory over Milosevic now seems largely irrelevant, even harmful – as America's allies against Milosevic in Sarajevo, Pristina and Tirana have also aided those suspected of bombing New York and Washington DC. Bitterly ironic, for sure, but the Balkans was built on irony.
Bosnia, Albania and the KLA regime in Pristina have, of course, all vowed complete loyalty and commitment to help the US fight terrorism. Problem is, terrorism and militant Islam are so rooted in their societies, they cannot get rid of it even if they honestly wanted to.
Forces of narco-terrorism on the run! Crapping in their pants all the way home to the slums of Tirana!
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