CIA's bastard army ran riot in Balkans' backed extremists
Special report: Kosovo
By Peter Beaumont, Ed Vulliamy and Paul Beaver
Sunday March 11, 2001, The Observer
The United States secretly supported the ethnic Albanian extremists now behind
insurgencies in Macedonia and southern Serbia.
The CIA encouraged former Kosovo Liberation Army fighters to launch a rebellion
in southern Serbia in an effort to undermine the then Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic, according to senior European officers who served with the
international peace-keeping force in Kosovo (K-For), as well as leading
Macedonian and US sources.
They accuse American forces with K-For of deliberately ignoring the massive
smuggling of men and arms across Kosovo's borders.
The accusations were made in a series of interviews by The Observer. They emerge
as America has been forced into a rapid U-turn over its support for Albanian
extremists in Kosovo seeking a 'Greater Kosovo' that would include Albanian
communities in Serbia and Macedonia.
In the past week ethnic Albanian guerrillas have intensified their campaign of
attacks in the two areas, threatening a new war in the region which last week
put US troops in the firing line in the Balkans for the first time.
The accusations have led to tension in K-For between the European and US
military missions. European officers are furious that the Americans have allowed
guerrilla armies in its sector to train, smuggle arms and launch attacks across
two international borders.
One European K-For battalion commander told The Observer yesterday: 'The CIA has
been allowed to run riot in Kosovo with a private army designed to overthrow
Slobodan Milosevic. Now he's gone the US State Department seems incapable of
reining in its bastard army.'
He added: 'Most of last year, there was a growing frustration with US support
for the radical Albanians. US policy was and still is out of step with the other
Nato allies.'
The claim was backed by senior Macedonian officials in the capital, Skopje.
'What has been happening with the National Liberation Army [which has been
responsible for a series of attacks on Macedonia's borders in recent weeks] and
the UCPMB [its sister organisation in southern Serbia] is very similar to what
happened when the KLA was launched in 1995-96,' said one. 'I will say only this:
the US intelligence agencies have not been honest here.'
The claims were given extra credence from an unexpected source - Arben Xhafari,
leader of Macedonia's main Albanian party who tried to prevent the crisis on the
border igniting an ethnic civil war inside Macedonia itself.
A US State Department official blamed the last administration. There had now
been 'a shift of emphasis'.
For more background information on the CIA's involvement with the KLA and the
lies and deception which launched NATO's war against Yugoslavia, check out the
following articles which appear in issue
#43 of the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade's magazine, Press for Conversion!
(Dozens of other articles, summarizing 50 years of CIA covert activities, are
also included in this issue, on the theme: "A People's History of the
CIA: The Subversion of Democracy from Australia to Zaire.")