<<<<LA Narco-Mafia
The KLA's baneful impact has already been felt in Italy, particularly with regard to narco-terrorism. "In just the
first two weeks of January, there were nine murders carried out by KLA assets in Milan," Works informed The
New American. "This is nothing new, by any means. The KLA is tightly connected to the Albanian mafia, which is
one of the major sources of heroin in Europe, and is also heavily involved in all aspects of the vice industry."
As Ben Works pointed out in a February 4th analysis, the Clinton Administration-crafted plan to grant "partial
autonomy" to a KLA-dominated Kosovo all but guarantees that the province "will find itself controlled by the
gunmen of an international drug-dealing mafia masquerading as an idealistic liberation army." The narco-mafia from
which the KLA was spawned has been deeply involved in drug trafficking since the early 1980s as a means of
fueling political insurrection.
A 1994 report compiled by France's Observatire Geopolitique Des Drogues, which carries out counter-narcotics
investigations on behalf of the European Commission, found 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 not only for the current conflict in Bosnia but also for the
brewing war in Kosovo." The Kosovo headquarters of the Albanian drug network was identified in that report as
Tropaja — a village on the Serbian-Albanian border that is a KLA stronghold. Large quantities of heroin from the
embryonic KLA's narco-network were seized in Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and Greece, and profits reaped
from drug dealing were used to buy weapons. The report noted that "Russian army barracks constitute an almost
inexhaustible source of hardware for these networks."
Until his recent arrest, 35-year-old Agim Gashi, an ethnic Albanian from the Kosovo city of Pristina, was Milan's
ruling drug lord. The Milanese newspaper Corriere della Sera reported on January 19th that Gashi "supplied his
brothers in Kosovo with Kalashnikov rifles, bazookas, and hand grenades. He controlled the heroin market, and
at least part of the billions he made from it was used to buy weapons for the ‘resistance' movement of the
Albanian Kosovo community."
In one telephone conversation intercepted by Italian police, Gashi was overheard admonishing his Turkish heroin
suppliers to continue shipments during Ramadan — "a violation of religious rules for the sake of a more important
cause: ‘To submerge Christian infidels in drugs.'" Despite Gashi's recent arrest, the KLA's narco-allies remain
atop Milan's underworld, and are accepting the homage of the older, established syndicates: "The old 'Ndrangheta
families, the Mafia … and the old Egyptian ‘lords' depend on the new masters of the drug market, acknowledging
their authority."
jbs.org |
