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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (46337)	5/6/1999 10:33:00 PM
From: Catfish	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

Kosovo Refugees: Organized Crime The Times May 6, 1999 John Laughland The Times, London OPINION John Laughland 'In spontaneously opening our hearts to these Kosovan refugees, we are opening our country to organised criminality' The announcement yesterday that Britain will receive 1,000 Kosovan refugees every week is excellent news - for heroin addicts, that is. The arrivals from Kosovo are the final link in a chain which connects European users with Central Asian producers. And the conflict in Kosovo is the latest in a series of wars in the former communist bloc fought to seize control of drugs trafficking routes. This war is criminal in every sense. Just as previous wars were fought to control trade routes, whether for oil or other commodities, so this conflict is drug-fuelled. The "ethnic" uprisings which convulse formerly communist states invariably occur at strategically important points on the Eurasian drug route. It runs from the heroin fields of Afghanistan, through the former Soviet Central Asian states, the Caucasus, Turkish Kurdistan and into the Balkans. Eighty per cent of the heroin on sale in Europe now passes along this route. Unlike normal trade, the drugs trade requires paramilitary control to be exercised over territory. Private armies are needed to control land supply routes to Europe. Conflicts in formerly communist countries have an unerring tendency to take place over the mountain passes and ports vital to the drugs trade. The Chechen war in Southern Russia and the Ossetian conflict were battles for control of the main road through the Caucasus Mountains. The Abhkhaz uprising in Georgia in 1992-93, and the Albanian rebellion in 1997, were conflicts over the control of ports. The war in Kosovo is only the latest, most horrific, of these turf battles. The KLA, whose activities are at the heart of the conflict, is an outgrowth of the Kosovo Albanian mafia. These Kosovan criminals operate the most powerful drug-running network in Europe. The Albanian mafia's growth, and involvement in the Kosovo conflict, is the horrific coda to a series of errors. First, the war in Yugoslavia between 1991-1995 disrupted the normal drugs route into Europe. Albanian criminals profited from this disruption. Secondly, the ranks of the criminals have been swollen by former communist thugs deprived of a living by changes in Albania. When Sali Berisha was elected head of Albania's democratic government in 1992 he sacked two-thirds of the secret police force, the Sigurimi. They rapidly decanted themselves into organised Albanian crime networks, just as East German Stasi agents became active in the Russian mafia. Because Albania was now governed by a democrat, these communist criminals concentrated their illegal activities north of the border, in Yugoslav Kosovo. Thirdly, in 1997, when President Berisha impounded 100 speedboats running drugs, illegal immigrants and prostitutes across the Adriatic to Italy, the mafia and the old Communist Party conspired to overthrow him. After the coup, Jane's Intelligence Review wrote that Albania had become "the crime capital of Europe". The mafia-communist seizure of power in Tirana in mid-1997 allowed the KLA to concentrate on expanding its influence further north, and the uprising within Yugoslavia began in earnest in January 1998. Finally, a separate development in the mid 1990s made the need to control the new drugs hub of Kosovo even more urgent than before. In March 1995, the Schengen agreement abolished border controls throughout continental Europe. Schengen conveniently created an entire frontier-free zone on the KLA's doorstep, ripe for exploitation. Albanians now control some 70 per cent of the heroin market in Germany and Switzerland. The KLA's two main offices abroad are, unsurprisingly, in those countries. There are now 2,000 Kosovan Albanians in Swiss prisons serving sentences for drugs smuggling. The new implantation of Kosovan refugees in Britain will give the KLA a new, and unexpected, base for its trafficking here. Not all the refugees, of course, will be drug-runners. But they will be vulnerable to control by them. Cherie Blair, who cried at the refugees' fate, may not have realised that they are also victims of the KLA, which controls the camps. Reports from Macedonia and Albania confirm that KLA "minders" ensure that all refugees peddle the same line when speaking to Western journalists. KLA gangsters rob them of any remaining cash. And KLA pimps driving Mercedes kidnap refugee girls for prostitution in Italy. In spontaneously opening our hearts to these refugees, we are opening our country to organised criminality. The author is an academic and writer on European affairs commen@the-times.co.uk freerepublic.com