'The Special Relationship' With Militant Islam
NATO Backed Islamic Terrorism In The Balkans
The West's Secret Islamic Jihad In Former Yugoslavia
www.nlpwessex.org/docs/balkansusbackterrorism.htm

PRESS REPORTS

“We condemn very strongly terrorist actions in Kosovo. The UCK [KLA] is, without any question, a terrorist group.”
United States special envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gelbard, speaking about the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) 1998
Agence France Presse, 23 February 1998

"While covering the CIA for the Los Angeles Times and later the New York Times, I found that patiently listening to my sources paid off in unexpected ways. During one interview, a source was droning on about a minor bureaucratic battle inside the CIA when he briefly referred to how then-President Bill Clinton had secretly given the green light to Iran to covertly ship arms to Bosnian Muslims during the Balkan wars. The man had already resumed talking about his bureaucratic turf war when I realized what he had just said and interrupted him, demanding that he go back to Iran. That led me to write a series of stories that prompted the House of Representatives to create a special select committee to investigate the covert Iran-Bosnia arms pipeline."
James Risen - The Biggest Secret
The Intercept, 3 September 2018

Pursuing 'Regime Change' In The Balkans With The Terrorists Linking Up In Kosovo In 1999
Above Far Left: Hashim Thaci, Head of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a previously State Department listed terrorist organisation, closely linked to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda Above Far Right: US General Wesley Clark, NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (1997 - 2000)	Above: Madeleine Albright, US Secretary of State, greets the KLA's Hashim Thaci

"I know a terrorist when I see one and these men are terrorists."
United States special envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gelbard, speaking about the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) 1998
BBC Online, 28 June 1998

The NATO Backed Islamic Jihad ('Djihad') In Kosovo

"Albanian separatism in Kosovo and Metohija was formally characterized as a 'jihad' in October 1998 at an annual international Islamic conference in Pakistan. Nonetheless, the 25,000 strong KLA continued to receive official NATO/U.S. arms and training support and, at the talks in Rambouillet, France, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright shook hands with 'freedom fighter' Hashim Thaci, a KLA leader. As this was taking place, Europol (the European Police Organization based in The Hague) was preparing a scathing report on the connection between the KLA and international drug gangs. Even Robert Gelbard, America´s special envoy to Bosnia, officially described the KLA as Islamic terrorists. With the future status of Kosovo still in question, the only real development that may be said to be taking place there is the rise of Wahhabi Islam -- the puritanical Saudi variety favored by bin Laden -- and the fastest growing variety of Islam in the Balkans."
Al Qaeda´s Balkan Links
Wall St Journal, 1 November 2001

"In 1998, the U.S. State Department listed the KLA as a terrorist organization, indicating that it was financing its operations with money from the international heroin trade and loans from Islamic countries and individuals, among them allegedly Usama bin Laden. Another link to bin Laden is the fact that the brother of a leader in an Egyptian Djihad organization and also a military commander of Usama bin Laden, was leading an elite KLA unit during the Kosovo conflict. In 1998, the KLA was described as a key player in the drugs for arms business in 1998, 'helping to transport 2 billion USD worth of drugs annually into Western Europe'. The KLA and other Albanian groups seem to utilize a sophisticated network of accounts and companies to process funds. In 1998, Germany froze two bank accounts belonging to the 'United Kosova' organization after it had been discovered that several hundred thousand dollars had been deposited into those accounts by a convicted Kosovar Albanian drug trafficker."
'The Threat Posed by the Convergence of Organized Crime, Drugs Trafficking and Terrorism'
Ralf Mutschke, Assistant Director Of Interpol's Criminal Intelligence Division, Testimony Given To The House Judicial Committee, US Congress, 13 December 2000

"American intelligence agents have admitted they helped to train the Kosovo Liberation Army [KLA] before Nato's bombing of Yugoslavia. The disclosure angered some European diplomats, who said this had undermined moves for a political solution to the conflict between Serbs and Albanians... Several KLA leaders had the mobile phone number of General Wesley Clark, the Nato commander..."
CIA aided Kosovo guerrilla army
Sunday Times , 12 March 2000

"British and American special forces teams are working undercover in Kosovo with the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army to identify Serbian targets for Nato bombing raids.....It is the latest evidence of the growing co-operation between Nato and the KLA, a movement once denounced by the West's leaders as 'terrorists'...... The alliance is now quietly drafting the KLA into its war against Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader. It is even considering plans to train them and ease the arms embargo on Yugoslavia to supply them with weapons such as mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.... They are negotiating for a long-term training deal with Military and Professional Resources International, a mercenary company run by former American officers who operate with semi-official approval from the Pentagon and played a key role in building up Croatia's armed forces..."
SAS teams move in to help KLA 'rise from the ashes'
Sunday Telegraph, 18 April 1999

NATO's Islamic Jihad In Bosnia

"The Central Intelligence Agency has its own argot for describing the hallucinatory world within which its employees move. None of its esoteric terms are more euphemistic than 'blowback', the term coined to describe operations which end up rebounding against their creators. But as the Americans slowly unravel the international network surrounding Osama bin Laden, the man they blame for the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, 'blowback' is exactly what they are finding.   Last week, it was revealed that one of those under arrest is a former Egyptian soldier named Ali Mohamed, who is alleged to have provided training and assistance to Mr bin Laden's operatives. Yet Mr Mohamed, it is clear from his record, was working for the US government at the time he provided the training: he was a Green Beret, part of America's Special Forces....  It had already been known that in those days, the US and Mr bin Laden were on the same side, but it now appears that America may actually have aided Mr bin Laden's organisation and even trained some of those who it now contends are 'terrorists'. Mr Ali may be the missing link. It had already been known that in 1989, Mr Ali came to the New York area to train mujahedin on their way to Afghanistan. Those visits have put him in the spotlight once before: among those he trained was El Sayyid Nosair, who was jailed in 1995 for killing Rabbi Meir Kahane, leader of the Jewish Defence League, and, along with several others, with plotting to blow up several New York landmarks. At his trial, Mr Nosair claimed that the reason he had military manuals was that he was being trained by the US, not because he was intent on terrorism. It is uncertain whether Mr Mohamed came to New York on official business, but for some of the trips, he was a serving US Special Forces' sergeant. Mr Mohamed met the men at the Al-Kifah Refugee Centre in Brooklyn's Atlantic Avenue, a place of pivotal importance to Operation Cyclone, the American effort to support the mujahedin. The Al-Kifah Centre and the associated Afghan Refugee Services Inc were raising funds and, crucially, providing recruits for the struggle, with active American assistance....  In December 1992, a US army official met one of the Afghan veterans from Al-Kifah and offered help with a covert operation to support the Muslims in Bosnia, funded with Saudi money, according to one of those jailed for assisting with the New York bombings."
Terror 'blowback' burns CIA
Independent, 1 November 1998

"Many writers and reporters have traced al-Qa'eda and other terror groups' origins back to the Afghan war of 1979-1992, that last gasp of the Cold War when US-backed mujahedin forces fought against the invading Soviet army. It is well documented that America played a major role in creating and sustaining the mujahedin, which included Osama bin Laden's Office of Services set up to recruit volunteers from overseas ... Yet America's role in backing the mujahedin a second time in the early and mid-1990s is seldom mentioned - largely because very few people know about it, and those who do find it prudent to pretend that it never happened.... From 1992 to 1995, the Pentagon assisted with the movement of thousands of mujahedin and other Islamic elements from Central Asia into Europe, to fight alongside Bosnian Muslims against the Serbs. The Bosnia venture appears to have been very important to the rise of mujahedin forces, to the emergence of today's cross-border Islamic terrorists who think nothing of moving from state to state in the search of outlets for their jihadist mission. In moving to Bosnia, Islamic fighters were transported from the ghettos of Afghanistan and the Middle East into Europe; from an outdated battleground of the Cold War to the major world conflict of the day; from being yesterday's men to fighting alongside the West's favoured side in the clash of the Balkans. If Western intervention in Afghanistan created the mujahedin, Western intervention in Bosnia appears to have globalised it.... The Pentagon's secret alliance with Islamic elements allowed mujahedin fighters to be 'flown in', though they were initially reserved as shock troops for particularly hazardous operations against Serb forces. According to a report in the Los Angeles Times in October 2001, from 1992 as many as 4,000 volunteers from the Middle East, North Africa and Europe, 'known as the mujahedin', arrived in Bosnia to fight with the Muslims. Richard Holbrooke, America's former chief Balkans peace negotiator, has said that the Bosnian Muslims 'wouldn't have survived' without the help of the mujahedin, though he later admitted that the arrival of the mujahedin was a 'pact with the devil' from which Bosnia is still recovering. By the end of the 1990s State Department officials were increasingly worried about the consequences of this pact. Under the terms of the 1995 Dayton peace accord, the foreign mujahedin units were required to disband and leave the Balkans. Yet in 2000, the State Department raised concerns about the 'hundreds of foreign Islamic extremists' who became Bosnian citizens after fighting against the Serbs, and who pose a potential terror threat to Europe and the United States. US officials claimed that one of bin Laden's top lieutenants had sent operatives to Bosnia, and that during the 1990s Bosnia had served as a 'staging area and safe haven' for al-Qa'eda and others. The Clinton administration had discovered that it is one thing to permit the movement of Islamic groups across territories; it is quite another to rein them back in again. Indeed, for all the Clinton officials' concern about Islamic extremists in the Balkans, they continued to allow the growth and movement of mujahedin forces in Europe through the 1990s. In the late 1990s, in the run-up to Clinton's and Blair's Kosovo war of 1999, the USA backed the Kosovo Liberation Army against Serbia. According to a report in the Jerusalem Post in 1998, KLA members, like the Bosnian Muslims before them, had been 'provided with financial and military support from Islamic countries', and had been 'bolstered by hundreds of Iranian fighters or mujahedin ...[some of whom] were trained in Osama bin Laden's terrorist camps in Afghanistan'. It seems that, for all its handwringing, the USA just couldn't break the pact with the devil... It would appear that when it comes to Bosnia, many in the West have a moral blind spot..... Western intervention in Bosnia, it would appear, has become an unquestionably positive thing, something that is beyond interrogation and debate."
How we trained al-Qa'eda
Spectator, 13 September 2003

"The Clinton administration followed up by providing strong support to the KLA, even though it was known that the KLA supported the Muslim mujahadeen. Despite that knowledge, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had the KLA removed from the State Department list of terrorists. This action paved the way for the United States to provide the KLA with needed logistical support. At the same time, the KLA also received support from Iran and Usama bin Laden, along with 'Islamic holy warriors' who were jihad veterans from Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan. Swiss journalist Richard Labeviere, in his book, 'Dollars for Terror,' said that the international Islamic networks linked to bin Laden received help from U.S. intelligence community. Indeed, Chechen sources claim that U.S. intelligence also aided them in their opposition to Russia. Given that U.S. policy in the post-Cold War period has not only been anti-Russian but anti-Iranian, the United States worked closely with Pakistan's predominantly Sunni Inter-Services Intelligence organization. Through ISI, the United States recruited Sunni mujahadeen by staging them in Chechnya to fight in Bosnia and later in Kosovo."
F.Michael Maloof, former senior Pentagon Counterterrorism Adviser
Iran subversion in Balkans
G2 Bulletin, 25 September 2006

The Same Model Continued Into The Next Century
NATO's Secret Islamic Jihad In Syria More Than A Decade After The Balkans Wars

Overview
'Our Terrorists' - NATO's Terrorism Activities In The Balkans

"The conflict between Serbs and Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina, while provoking little more than official condemnation and appeals for increased United Nations intervention by Arab governments, has been adopted by Islamic fundamentalists as the newest holy war against Christian infidels bent on the destruction of Islam. In the last few weeks the conflict has lured several hundred militants, many of them veterans of the war in Afghanistan, to volunteer for the Bosnian forces. ... Arab newspapers and television stations increasingly focus on the conflict, and private Islamic charity groups have collected tens of millions of dollars for the Bosnians, as they once did for the Palestinians. Arab government officials, under pressure from the groundswell of support for the Bosnians, are trying to wrest the popular cause from the fundamentalists. The 47-member Islamic Conference Organization ended a two-day meeting in Jidda on Wednesday with a call for the lifting of a United Nations arms embargo so the Bosnian Muslims they can defend themselves. The embargo now applies to all sides of the conflict, though arms smuggling is said to be widespread. ... There are an estimated 400 Saudi volunteers, many veterans of Afghanistan, along with Arabs from Egypt, Pakistan, the Sudan and Algeria fighting with the Muslim forces. They see in the fight a pure, good battle against the forces of darkness. ... Many of these volunteers come from comfortable middle- and upper-class homes. They fight for one or two months and then return to Saudi Arabia. More than two dozen Saudis have been killed in Bosnia. For those who die, the militant clerics have promised shahada, the direct ascent to heaven granted to anyone who falls defending the faith. In the last few weeks the pictures of young Saudi men killed by Serbian forces have appeared in local newspapers, although the names below the bearded fighters are usually their noms de guerre. In videos that circulate throughout the country, parents who lost sons often thank God for the sacrifice. The volunteers are sponsored by a variety of militant religious organizations and often have their expenses and plane fare covered. ... The Islamic institutions, especially those in Saudi Arabia, are well financed. Saudi officials say that the Government has donated $100 million to the Islamic institutions for Bosnia relief efforts and that private donations, which according to a new law must be funneled through the Government, have added $50 million. Despite formal denials from the relief organizations, Saudi officials say an increasing amount of the charity on behalf of the Bosnians is now used to provide arms and logistical support for Arab volunteers. 'Since August most of the money raised for relief has been turned over to the Bosnians for weapons,' a Saudi official said. 'And most contributors probably support this.' ... Reports from the Balkans suggest that the Arab assistance has significantly improved the firepower of the Muslim-dominated Bosnian Government forces, providing assault rifles, mortars, rockets and other weapons to troops who had been equipped largely with hunting rifles and shotguns at the beginning of the war. The Saudi-based Islamic Relief Organization, one of the largest charity organizations, funnels money, relief workers and supplies to Bosnia, although its officials strenuously deny that they provide any backing for the military effort....The authorities forbid any public acknowledgement that any Saudi citizens are involved directly in the Balkan conflict. But Government officials say men who volunteer for the relief work often end up as soldiers."
Muslims From Afar Joining 'Holy War' in Bosnia
New York Times, 5 December 1992

"The Bosnian war was the first major test of the West's resolve in the post-Cold War era, and one that it unambiguously failed.... Into this already complicated situation came the ultimate 'wild card', the United States of America, the world's only superpower. A small group at the head of America's foreign policy elite intervened covertly in what it had previously called 'Europe's problem'.... Its easy answer for Bosnia's ills was 'lift and strike' - re-arm the Bosniaks (mostly Bosnian Muslims) and Croats and bomb the Serbs. At first arms were sent to Bosnia via Croatia, but the Croats were reluctant to arm the Bosnian army with sophisticated weapons, so America took it upon itself to deliver arms directly to the Bosnian Muslim Army - the ABiH. These covert air drops ['Black Flights'] began at the start of 1995. The most well-documented were the drops at Tuzla in the north of Bosnia, where they were observed by members of the UN Nordic Battalion stationed close to the dropping zone.... Nato had been manipulated to allow the US to conduct its own unilateral policy in the Balkans. The air drops were only the tip of the iceberg. A team of retired US officers planned the bloody Croatian 'liberation' of the Kraijina and the subsequent invasion of western Bosnia by the Croatian Army in the summer of 1995. ....  Senior European negotiators believe that with US backing the war could have ended two years earlier, but US desire to see the Serbs punished meant that they instead encouraged the Bosnian Government to continue fighting. The price in human terms? Over 15,000 dead and nearly 600,000 refugees."
Allies and lies
BBC Online, 22 June 2001

"The British journalist Nik Gowing tracked down several Norwegian witnesses to the Black Flights [used to arm the Bosnian Muslims]... one of the most important Norwegian witnesses, [Oivind] Moldestad [a Norwegian Air Force Captain who later gave a dramatic interview disclosing many details on the subject for a BBC documentary which is available as video on the BBC web site], would be taken aside by three American officers. They took him to a balcony on the fifth floor of a hotel in Zagreb, and made clear to him that if he stuck to his account and said any more on the subject, things could get messy for him. After reports on British television and articles in the press, journalists were also put under pressure by the American embassy in London. They heard all manner of threats. The embassy was said to have been acting on the instructions of the State Department."
Srebrenica - A Safe Area?
Appendix II - Intelligence and the war in Bosnia 1992 – 1995: The role of the intelligence and security services
Chapter 4, Secret arms supplies and other covert actions
Report Published on Behalf of The Dutch Government, 10 April 2002

"U.S. support for the Muslims in Bosnia also came from the person who is the new head of the Central Intelligence Agency, General Michael V. Hayden. At the time, he was director of the U.S. European Command Intelligence Directorate, based in Stuttgart, Germany. According to a Dutch government report, Hayden 'had access to virtually all intelligence' from the United States, United Nations and NATO. As a result, Hayden used his intelligence unit to allow so-called 'black flights' of arms to Muslim forces during the Bosnian campaign in 1995. General Hayden was aware that these arms were assisting many of the foreign mujahadeen, which also were receiving support from Iran and bin Laden. According to a Dutch intelligence report at the time, the shipments included 'weapons, ammunition, uniforms, helmets, new anti-tank weapons and Stingers.' These arms were said to have been dropped in Tuzla, shipped by land or air into Bosnia for the Bosnian Muslim army which included the al-Qaida-linked mujahadeen. After becoming the head of the National Security Agency in March 1999, Hayden then refused to clear the use of intelligence to halt continuing illegal shipments of arms to mujahadeen militants in the Balkans. Often, these arms were brought in discreetly by Muslim countries that were part of the United Nations peacekeeping forces sent in to prevent further violence."
F.Michael Maloof, former senior Pentagon Counterterrorism Adviser
Iran subversion in Balkans
G2 Bulletin, 25 September 2006

"The official Dutch inquiry into the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, released last week, contains one of the most sensational reports on western intelligence ever published. Officials have been staggered by its findings .... Now we have the full story of the secret alliance between the Pentagon and radical Islamist groups from the Middle East designed to assist the Bosnian Muslims... in flagrant violation of the UN security council arms embargo against all combatants in the former Yugoslavia. The result was a vast secret conduit of weapons smuggling though Croatia. This was arranged by the clandestine agencies of the US, Turkey and Iran, together with a range of radical Islamist groups, including Afghan mojahedin and the pro-Iranian Hizbullah...."
America used Islamists to arm the Bosnian Muslims
Guardian, 22 April 2002

"... it was the covert arming and training of the Bosnians by the US, in breach of the UN arms embargo resolution, that was responsible for prolonging the suffering of the people of Bosnia. For Izetbegovic's government was thereby persuaded to abandon the UN peace process and not to sign up to various UN-brokered peace proposals on offer, such as those I helped broker in 1994. The correct lesson to draw from the war in Bosnia with regards to Syria is that arming any of the warring parties, however just may seem their cause, inevitably increases the intensity of conflict."
General Sir Michael Rose, Commander, UN Forces, Bosnia 1994
Letter - London Times, 16 April 2013, Print Edition, P29

"The UK Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) was also aware of the American secret arms supplies to the ABiH [the Bosnian Muslim Army]. According to a British intelligence official, the DIS never made an issue of them, so as not to further damage the sensitive relationship with the US services. An internal DIS analysis concluded that the arms were delivered via 'a different network', and that the entire operation was probably led by the NSC [National Security Council].....  the DIS received a direct order from the British government not to investigate this affair. This was not permitted for the simple reason that the matter was too sensitive in the framework of American-British relations. The DIS also obtained intelligence on the secret supplies to the ABiH from the German military intelligence service and the Bundesnachrichtendienst, because some of the flights departed from Frankfurt. However, no American-German alliance existed in the matter of clandestine support to the ABiH."
Srebrenica - A Safe Area?
Appendix II - Intelligence and the war in Bosnia 1992 – 1995: The role of the intelligence and security services
Chapter 4, Secret arms supplies and other covert actions
Report Published on Behalf of The Dutch Government, 10 April 2002

NATO Fraud - There Was No Genocide In Kosovo - Click Here

"President Clinton is depicting his decision to send 20,000 troops into Bosnia as a natural outgrowth of America's European alliance. But instead of seeing Bosnia as the eastern frontier of NATO, we should view the Balkans as the the western frontier of America's rapidly expanding sphere of influence in the Middle East. Until World War II, it should be recalled, the Balkans were considered not a part of Europe but of 'the Near East.' The fact that the United States is more enthusiastic than its European allies about a Bosnian Muslim state reflects, among other things, the new American role as the leader of an informal collection of Muslim nations from the Persian Gulf to the Balkans. The regions once ruled by the Ottoman Turks show signs of becoming the heart of a third American empire. Since the late 19th century, the United States has had three empires (the term refers to voluntary groupings of client states as well as traditional colonies). In each case America has steadily expanded its global influence by imposing control over the former empires of defeated great powers. The first American empire was created in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War in 1898 when the United States gobbled up Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and much of the Caribbean. It lasted until the end of the World War II. The second American empire, from 1945 to 1989, centered on Western Europe and Asia. Now, in the years after the cold war, the United States is again establishing suzerainty over the empire of a former foe. The disintegration of the Soviet Union has prompted the United States to expand its zone of military hegemony into Eastern Europe (through NATO) and into formerly neutral Yugoslavia. And -- most important of all -- the end of the cold war has permitted America to deepen its involvement the Middle East. Even before the war against Iraq transformed the United States into the dominant power of the Persian Gulf, America was laying the groundwork for the third empire by steadily building up its military commitments in the Middle East....The main purpose of NATO countries, for the foreseeable future, will be to serve as staging areas for American wars in the Balkans, the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf..... Reducing the American military presence there [in East Asia] would free resources needed to bolster the new commitments in the Middle East and the Balkans -- commitments that are likely to endure for a generation, if not longer. Unlike the first two American empires, the third empire cannot be justified as a means of spreading democracy or self-determination. American leaders will always pay lip service to those ideals, as they did in liberating Kuwait from Saddam Hussein. But most of America's clients in the Middle East are authoritarian states like Saudi Arabia, or democracies like Turkey, troubled by the prospect of self-determination to their ethnic minorities.... President Clinton's high-stakes gamble in the Balkans means that the United States can no longer afford to preside over a lax Americana rather than a pax Americana. The challenge of consolidating a new European-Middle Eastern sphere of influence while drawing back from Asia will require the United States to develop new NATO-like institutions and alliances to deal with the various protectorates that it has collected since 1990. Whatever its ultimate contours, our newest empire must be backed up by adequate force if it is to be a going concern. Protectorates must be protected."
Jacob Heilbrunn and Michael Lind
The Third American Empire
New York Times, 2 January 1996

"There were certain forces in the U.S. government who worked with the Turkish paramilitary groups, including Abdullah Çatli’s group, Fethullah Gülen.... ... these [intercepted] conversations, between 1997 and 2001, had to do with a Central Asia operation that involved bin Laden. Not once did anybody use the word 'al-Qaeda.' It was always 'mujahideen,' always 'bin Laden' and, in fact, not 'bin Laden' but 'bin Ladens' plural. There were several bin Ladens who were going on private jets to Azerbaijan and Tajikistan. The Turkish ambassador in Azerbaijan worked with them. There were bin Ladens, with the help of Pakistanis or Saudis, under our management.... bringing people from East Turkestan into Kyrgyzstan, from Kyrgyzstan to Azerbaijan, from Azerbaijan some of them were being channeled to Chechnya, some of them were being channeled to Bosnia. From Turkey, they were putting all these bin Ladens on NATO planes. People and weapons went one way, drugs came back.... A lot of the drugs were going to Belgium with NATO planes. After that, they went to the UK, and a lot came to the U.S. via military planes to distribution centers in Chicago and Paterson, New Jersey. Turkish diplomats who would never be searched were coming with suitcases of heroin."
Sibel Edmonds, former Turkish translator at the FBI on the intercepts she discovered
Who’s Afraid of Sibel Edmonds?
The American Conservative, November 2009

"For years, Saudi Arabia flatly denied it had provided money and logistical support for Islamist militant groups that attacked Western targets. But that assertion is disputed by a former al-Qaeda commander who testified in a United Nations war-crimes trial that his unit was funded by the Saudi High Commission for Relief of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ali Ahmed Ali Hamad, the former al-Qaeda fighter, gave the same account to The Inquirer in an interview in this struggling city in the central Balkans. 'Because it was the biggest charity, [the commission] helped the mujaheddin the most,' Hamad said, adding that it had provided 'everything a person needed to exist.' Hamad, 37, is expected to be called as a witness in a lawsuit filed by Cozen O'Connor alleging that Saudi Arabia and affiliated charities financed al-Qaeda and other groups as they geared up for the 9/11 attacks. As a convicted terrorist, Hamad is an imperfect witness. During the Balkans war, from 1992 to 1995, jihadists from North Africa and the Middle East were accused of atrocities against indigenous Serbs and Croatians. Hamad admits having done 'bad things' as an al-Qaeda fighter, and he is serving a 10-year sentence in a Bosnian jail for his role in a 1997 Mostar bombing. Yet Hamad's account of his time in the Balkans went largely uncontroverted during the U.N. trial, where he was a prosecution witness. He contends that the Saudi High Commission, an agency of the Saudi government, and other Islamist charities supported al-Qaeda-led units that committed atrocities. Mujaheddin units, he said, recruited fighters, prepared for battle, and financed their operations in the Balkans. He said the Saudi High Commission had poured tens of millions of dollars into mujaheddin units led by al-Qaeda operatives who fought with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. Money intended for humanitarian relief bought weapons and other military supplies.The charities also provided false identification, employment papers, diplomatic plates and vehicles that permitted Islamist fighters to enter the country and pass easily through military checkpoints, Hamad said. Several charity offices, including those of the Saudi High Commission, were led by former mujaheddin or al-Qaeda members, at least one of whom trained with Hamad in an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, he said. Like other al-Qaeda fighters, Hamad said, he was an employee of the Saudi High Commission for a time and traveled through the war zone in commission vehicles with diplomatic plates."
A former al-Qaeda fighter accuses a Saudi charity
Philadelphia Inquirer, 31 May 2008

"The Balkans´ uncharacteristically silent exit from the world stage as the most prominent international hot spot of the last decade belies its status as a major recruiting and training center of Osama bin Laden´s al Qaeda network. By feeding off the region´s impoverished republics and taking root in the unsettled diplomatic aftermath of the Bosnia and Kosovo conflicts, al Qaeda, along with Iranian Revolutionary Guard-sponsored terrorists, have burrowed their way into Europe´s backyard. For the past 10 years, the most senior leaders of al Qaeda have visited the Balkans, including bin Laden himself on three occasions between 1994 and 1996. The Egyptian surgeon turned terrorist leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri has operated terrorist training camps, weapons of mass destruction factories and money-laundering and drug-trading networks throughout Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Bosnia. This has gone on for a decade. Many recruits to the Balkan wars came originally from Chechnya, a jihad in which Al Qaeda has also played a part. These activities have been exhaustively researched by Yossef Bodansky, the former director of the U.S. House of Representatives´ Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare.... The overnight rise of heroin trafficking through Kosovo -- now the most important Balkan route between Southeast Asia and Europe after Turkey -- helped also to fund terrorist activity directly associated with al Qaeda and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Opium poppies, which barely existed in the Balkans before 1995, have become the No. 1 drug cultivated in the Balkans after marijuana. Operatives of two al Qaeda-sponsored Islamist cells who were arrested in Bosnia on Oct. 23 were linked to the heroin trade, underscoring the narco-jihad culture of today´s post-war Balkans.... By early 1998 the U.S. had already entered into its controversial relationship with the KLA to help fight off Serbian oppression of that province. While in February the U.S. gave into KLA demands to remove it from the State Department´s terrorism list, the gesture amounted to little. That summer the CIA and CIA-modernized Albanian intelligence (SHIK) were engaged in one of the largest seizures of Islamic Jihad cells operating in Kosovo. Fearing terrorist reprisal from al Qaeda, the U.S. temporarily closed its embassy in Tirana and a trip to Albania by then Defense Secretary William Cohen was canceled out of fear of an assassination attempt. Meanwhile, Albanian separatism in Kosovo and Metohija was formally characterized as a 'jihad' in October 1998 at an annual international Islamic conference in Pakistan. Nonetheless, the 25,000 strong KLA continued to receive official NATO/U.S. arms and training support and, at the talks in Rambouillet, France, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright shook hands with 'freedom fighter' Hashim Thaci, a KLA leader. As this was taking place, Europol (the European Police Organization based in The Hague) was preparing a scathing report on the connection between the KLA and international drug gangs. Even Robert Gelbard, America´s special envoy to Bosnia, officially described the KLA as Islamic terrorists. With the future status of Kosovo still in question, the only real development that may be said to be taking place there is the rise of Wahhabi Islam -- the puritanical Saudi variety favored by bin Laden -- and the fastest growing variety of Islam in the Balkans."
Al Qaeda´s Balkan Links
Wall St Journal, 1 November 2001
(European Edition)

"... the Albanian security situation reflects the volatility of the clan-based rivalries and the related narco-trafficking and criminal activities which are linked with global terrorism. But by admitting this as the basis for the need to move [US] facilities out of Albania, the US would then have to admit that this terrorism-related criminal activity, and particularly narco-trafficking, is intrinsically linked into the al-Qaida and Iranian-backed terrorist infrastructure of the region, and into the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which now, under new names, controls the Serbian province of Kosovo.... no-one in the State Department or Defense Department is willing to admit that US support for this terrorist and narco-trafficking base of Albanians in 1999 -- when the US led NATO into attacks on Serbia in order to assist the KLA -- was wrong. This is part of the distortion of US foreign and strategic policy: no-one will admit that they made a mistake. There are many Congressmen on Capitol Hill who understand that this distortion exists with regard to Balkan policy.  But equally, there are politicians in both major parties who supported the KLA during the 1990s, so that today it is impossible for a Republican-controlled Bush White House and Congress to attack the logic and merit of the 1999 war, waged against Serbia by the then-Democratic Party-controlled Clinton White House. It is difficult for the White House, for example, to criticize the 1990s support by the Clinton Administration for the al-Qaida -linked KLA without also opening up to criticism some senior members of the Republican Party..... The fact that the US has been forced to remove its assets from Albania, despite the quiet manner in which this has been undertaken, is just one indication of the ongoing degradation of the situation there. And yet the US still refuses to acknowledge that this is integrally linked with the Albanian-based terrorism underway in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, or that it is at the very heart of the creation of what is already a criminal sub-state in Kosovo, which is directly under the control of the KLA...."
Special Report; US Policy in the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean: Time to Stop Choosing Sides, and to Start Choosing Strategic Interests
Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, 13 April  2005

"If Senator Kennedy wants to talk about fraud [in relation to the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq], he ought to talk..... about what he and President Clinton told us in 1999 when they told us to bomb innocent Serbs, we'd find 100 thousand mass graves. Those mass graves were never found. They lied to the America people to justify the aerial bombardment campaign."
Congressman Curt Weldon (R) Pennsylvania on 'Hardball with Chris Matthews'
NBC News, 19 September 2003

Press Reports On False Claims Of Genocide By Serbs In Kosovo  - Click Here

"General Sir Michael Rose, the former United Nations military commander in Bosnia.... said false facts about the war in Bosnia were being fed to Congress.... he was visited by General John Galvin, former Supreme Allied Commander Europe who had been appointed by President Clinton to advise on a new structure for the Bosnian Army. General Rose said: 'We were escorted by a woman from the US Embassy who, in my view, was the most hostile American I met during all my time in Bosnia.' As they flew by helicopter towards Tuzla in the north, she pointed at all the destroyed villages high in the Zvijezda mountains and 'exclaimed excitedly' to General Galvin: 'Look at what the criminal Serbs have done.' In fact, General Rose said, they were Bosnian Croat villages ethnically cleansed by the Muslim forces. Later when they visited Mostar in the south where the Croats had virtually destroyed the Muslim sector in the eastern part of the town, the US official 'planted her hands on her ample hips' and cried: 'Well, at least this was done by the criminal Serbs.' General Rose said the woman burst into tears when it was pointed out that the Croats had been to blame. 'The fact was not lost on Galvin,' he said."
US bugged me in Bosnia, says General Rose
London Times, 10 November 1998

"American intelligence agents have admitted they helped to train the Kosovo Liberation Army [KLA] before Nato's bombing of Yugoslavia. The disclosure angered some European diplomats, who said this had undermined moves for a political solution to the conflict between Serbs and Albanians... Several KLA leaders had the mobile phone number of General Wesley Clark, the Nato commander..."
CIA aided Kosovo guerrilla army
Sunday Times , 12 March 2000

"General Wesley Clark, the former Nato commander and presidential hopeful, will testify next month at the war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic under conditions of strict censorship and confidentiality imposed by the United States. Washington is believed to be fearful of potentially damaging revelations about its Balkan realpolitik during the 1990s and in the Bosnian War. General Clark, who is seeking the Democratic Party nomination for President, will be one of the highest-profile witnesses to take the stand. The former Nato commander directed the alliance's 78-day bombing campaign in Kosovo in 1999, after Serbian forces had launched an onslaught against ethnic Albanian separatists. General Clark will testify on December 15 and 16. Public galleries will be closed and the broadcast system that transmits the proceedings on the internet and on closed-circuit television will be shut down. The conditions of General Clark's testimony include a 48-hour delay to enable the US Government to review the transcript and seek the court's consent to censor parts on the ground of national security. Two US representatives will attend the sessions. The three-judge panel hearing Mr Milosevic's case agreed to the conditions, which are unique, because they decided that they were justified by the potential importance of General Clark's testimony, Jim Landale, the tribunal spokesman, said. In his cross-examination of General Clark, Mr Milosevic could reveal sensitive information about the West's diplomatic and military strategy for dealing with the crisis in the Balkans."
General Clark to testify against Milosevic
London Times, 20 November 2003

"The retired General who had been refusing to declare himself a Democrat or Republican is now declaring himself a Democratic presidential candidate. But more important than his party affiliation is Wesley Clark's bizarre view on how to fight terrorism. The media refer to Clark's impressive military credentials but they fail to note that his main accomplishment under President Clinton was presiding over the establishment of a base for radical Islamic terrorism, including Osama bin Laden, in Kosovo... Clark, who has been making headlines by claiming that the U.S. decision to go to war in Iraq was a misjudgment based on scanty evidence, ran Clinton's NATO war against Yugoslavia on behalf of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The House of Representatives failed to authorize the war under the War Powers Act, making it illegal. Thousands of innocent people in Serbia, Yugoslavia's main province, were killed to stop an alleged 'genocide' by Yugoslavia that was not in fact taking place. Investigations determined that a couple thousand had died in the civil war there.... The 1998 State Department human rights report had described the KLA as a group that tortured and abducted people and made others 'disappear.' Yet a photograph was taken of Clark and [KLA leader] Thaki with their hands together in a gesture of solidarity. The KLA's ties to Osama bin Laden were also well-known and reported.... Another Democratic presidential candidate, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, has tried to prohibit funding for the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC), the successor to the KLA now being protected by U.N. troops as a result of the outcome of the conflict. Kucinich said an internal United Nations Report found the KPC responsible for violence, extortion, murder and torture.... Clark's presidential decision suggests that he believes the media will not ask him about supporting the same extremist Muslim forces in Kosovo that militarily attacked us on 9/11. He's right: during interviews on ABC's Good Morning America and the NBC Today show on September 17, the subject didn't come up. "
Wesley Clark's Ties To Muslim Terrorists
Accuracy in Media, 17 September 2003

"I read the latest reports concerning a recent Executive Order that hands the CIA a black bag in the Balkans for engineering a military coup in Serbia, for interrupting communications, for tampering with bank accounts, freezing assets abroad and training the Kosovo Liberation Army in terrorist tactics, such as how to blow up buildings. How this is intended to help establish a democracy in Serbia or Kosovo hasn't been explained. Nor has the failure to substantially demilitarize the KLA been explained. Nor has the reverse ethnic cleansing taking place in Kosovo by the KLA while NATO rules the province been explained."
Democrat Congressman Dennis Kucinich, Ohio
The Progressive, Vol 63, No.8, August 1999

"...the Albanian security situation reflects the volatility of the clan-based rivalries and the related narco-trafficking and criminal activities which are linked with global terrorism. But by admitting this as the basis for the need to move facilities out of Albania, the US would then have to admit that this terrorism-related criminal activity, and particularly narco-trafficking, is intrinsically linked into the al-Qaida and Iranian-backed terrorist infrastructure of the region, and into the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which now, under new names, controls the Serbian province of Kosovo. Significantly part of the trade-off which Washington made with Skopje was that Skopje backed-off from its vociferous claims about the ethnic-Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA) which has been attempting to break up the former Yugoslav area of Macedonia The NLA is a re-emerged part of the KLA; it is linked with al-Qaida, and with the Iranian terrorist infrastructure in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Raska in Southern Serbia, and in Serbia'S Kosovo area. The irony of this begins to emerge. The US rewards Skopje for stopping expressions of concern about Albanian terrorism which is also the cause of the US having to move its assets out of Albania itself. Why is this? Because no-one in the State Department or Defense Department is willing to admit that US support for this terrorist and narcotrafficking base of Albanians in 1999 - when the US led NATO into attacks on Serbia in order to assist the KLA - was wrong. This is part of the distortion of US foreign and strategic policy: no-one will admit that they made a mistake. There are many Congressmen on Capitol Hill who understand that this distortion exists with regard to Balkan policy. But equally, there are politicians in both major parties who supported the KLA during the 1990s, so that today it is impossible for a Republican controlled Bush White House and Congress to attack the logic and merit of the 1999 war, waged against Serbia by the then-Democratic Party-controlled Clinton White House. It is difficult for the White House, for example, to criticize the 1990s support by the Clinton Administration for the al-Qaida-linked KLA without also opening up to criticism some senior members of the Republican Party..... The State and Defense departments, and the CIA, have been constantly warned about the narco-trafficking and terrorism links in the Balkans, but have swept this aside. The State Department, despite having been presented with concrete intelligence about the activities of narcotraffickers and terrorists in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and in southern Serbia, Macedonia, and the like, has, nonetheless decided to say that there is no terrorism activity related to these areas.... by falling to acknowledge the changed strategic contextual realities and the changes and cracks within the Turkish system, the US reliance n Turkey, and its support for Turkey, become meaningless. and have damaging regional effects, including sustaining the logistical framework of the Islamist terrorist movements, even those which are against Turkey's own long-term interests. There has been strong Turkish involvement in supporting Balkan narcotraffickers and terrorist groups, perhaps unofficially, but certainly with considerable effect. There has been no re-evaluation despite an of this, and despite the proven links between Bosnian terrorism cells and the 9111 attackers and even to the Madrid bombers. It would. be a mistake to think that this problem will go away, or that the war on terrorism has successfully moved the tide against the terrorism and narco-trafficking infrastructure in the Balkans. The fact that the US has been forced to remove its assets from Albania, despite the quiet manner in which this has been undertaken, is just one indication of the ongoing degradation of the situation there. And yet the US still refuses to acknowledge that this is integrally linked with the Albanian-based terrorism underway in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, or that it is at the very heart of the creation of what is already a criminal sub-state in Kosovo, which is directly under the control of the KLA. The fact that the KLA leader and. until March 8, 2005, Prime Minister of Kosovo, Ramush (Hilmi) Haradinaj, was indicted for war crimes and taken to The Hague for trial still has not penetrated the consciousness of what is transpiring. Moreover, in order to somewhat ease the embarrassment of having backed the wrong side - the side of alQaida the narco-traffickers, the true genocidal xenophobists, and the criminal gangs in Kosovo, the US is in some ways actively working to let Mr Haradinaj out of prison, so that he can ' fight his legal battle from a position of freedom'. This is a man charged with having directly and personally killed many innocent people, not a politician who allegedly allowed things to happen by default. The scandal of this particular case has yet to break, but suffice it to say that Albanian mafia linked 10 the KLA have worked through former US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke - a close associate of the KLA and a beneficiary of its support - to approach the US President of the International Criminal Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia ({CTY), Theodore Meron to see Haradinai released. There are reports from within the ICTY that the State Department would approve the release of Haradinaj, and had, in fact, agreed with. Haradinaj in advance of his surrender to the ICTY, that a deal would be struck to ensure that he did not serve prison time for the charges be faced.... So in order to refuse to correct mistakes, or even acknowledge them, there are many officials within the US bureaucracy who have allowed themselves to be drawn into what has become almost a circus of foreign policy juggling which - even by the kindest interpretation - fails to help the US, the region in question, or the cause of US ethical leadership and credibility. This will result in more war, more instability, more narcotics on European and US streets, more instability in South-Eastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. And ultimately it will cost the US the respect and loyalty of those allies it has in the region and elsewhere. But dearly that's more important than admitting that mistakes were made, and need correction."
Gregory .R. Copley, President, the international Strategic Studies Association
US Policy in the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean: Time to Stop Choosing Sides, and to Start Choosing Strategic Interests
Presented at the Capitol Hill Conference on FYROM: The Need for Reassessment of us Policy in the Balkans, 14 April 2005

"In the hours before the release of the three German spies from Kosovo on November 28, nerves in Berlin were taught. That day, security circles hardly believed anymore that the BND agents would be released by evening. ... According to information obtained by the Welt am Sonntag, the German government has since Friday been seriously considering freezing aid it has already promised to Kosovo. A final decision has not been made. Nonetheless, concrete speculations have been made about cutting aid in specific areas, according to the information. The main area under consideration is defense. Such a step would certainly hurt Kosovo, given that Germany is the second largest bilateral donor country after the United States. Since 1999, Germany has given 280 million euros to the Kosovo authorities. Given his actions in the BND affair, Prime Minister Thaci will have to deal with such consequences. But why did he choose to pick this fight with Germany in the first place? In security circles one hears various answers to this question. The most common one is that the action was taken as revenge. The reason is a 67-page long, hard-hitting analysis by the BND about organized crime in Kosovo and a confidential report contracted by the German military, the Bundeswehr. In contrast to the CIA and MI6, both German intelligence reports accuse Thaci as well as former Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj and Xhavit Haliti of the parliamentary leadership of far-reaching involvement in organized crime. The BND writes: 'The key players (including Haliti, Haradinaj, and Thaci) are intimately involved in inter-linkages between politics, business, and organized crime structures in Kosovo.' At the end of the 1990s, the report accuses Thaci of leading a 'criminal network operating throughout Kosovo.' At that time he was a co-founder of the Kosovo Liberation Army, and led the Albanian delegation at the 1999 conference at Rambouillet that preceded the Kosovo war. The BND report also accuses Thaci of contacts to the Czech and Albanian mafias. In addition, it accuses him, together with Haliti, of ordering killings through the professional hit man 'Afrimi’, who is allegedly responsible for at least 11 contract murders. Concerning Haradinaj, like Thaci seen as a protégé of the United States, the BND report says he was involved 'in the full spectrum of criminal, political and military activities.'”
German spy affair might have been revenge
Die Welt, 30 November 2008

"After the failure of the Vietnam War, U.S foreign policy avoided direct intervention and instead opted for the funding of contras or the imposition of market reforms and ‘shock therapy’ via U.S dominated institutions such as the World Bank or IMF. Fortunately for the US, Yugoslavia’s ‘non-aligned’ stance in the Cold War meant it had been taking on IMF loans since the end of WWII, and by 1981 the SFRY had racked up nearly $20 billion in foreign debt..... Growth in industrial production shrank from 7% to negative 10% by 1990 as foreign capital and imports flooded the republics, smothering domestic production. In 1989-1990 alone the World Bank created 600,000 layoffs; an additional hundreds of thousands of Yugoslavs worked without pay for months at a time.[12] The IMF froze wages as inflation skyrocketed and by early 1990 real wages had dropped 41%.[13] Overall the IMF and World Bank programs greatly undermined the federation and fuelled ethnic tensions and secessionist movements which would tear Yugoslavia apart, namely by freezing transfer payments from Belgrade to the republics.[14] [15] As the IMF took control of the Central Bank and rendered the federal government almost completely powerless, secessionist movements began gaining traction in the republics. Germany, a NATO member, backed these secessionist movements in Slovenia and Croatia.[16] This included arms shipments and training. [17] ...In 1992 Macedonia also declared ‘independence’ and accepted occupation by US troops. In the same year fighting broke out in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the situation was more complicated – no single nationality held a majority. Nonetheless, the United States and Germany backed the Croatian and Bosnian separatists, providing training and arms, and thus fanning the flames of the conflict.[20].... In 1992, the Carrington–Cutileiro plan proposed a degree of autonomy to the Bosnian Serbs in order to prevent war. After a meeting with US ambassador Warren Zimmerman, Izetbegovic was convinced to withdraw his signature, and the Bosnian war broke out..... Radovan Karadžic, president of the Serb Republic, who still opposed secession, was forced out of power. A right-wing monarchist took his place and promptly purged the army, police, and government of any anti-NATO or leftist Serbs. Dissident radio stations were shut down and protests were suppressed with NATO armour.[34] With all dissent crushed and the state purged of any officials not approved by the West, the transformation of Bosnia into a NATO colony was complete. A similar fate awaited the autonomous Serbian province of Kosovo. The ‘Kosovo Liberation Army’, which was recognized by the US State Department as a terrorist organization, received British and CIA training and arms.[35] The group received the majority of its funding – and many members – from the Albanian diaspora, Islamist fundamentalist groups, and the international drug trade. The KLA relied on drug trade, assassination, intimidation (of not only Serbs but also ethnic Albanians who opposed them), destruction of Serbian property (namely homes and churches), and other acts of ethnic cleansing of non-Albanians. The Milosevic government was provoked and cracked down the KLA terror, in turn it was portrayed as genocidal against Kosovar Albanians. At this point, the Yugoslav federation was still suffering from economic collapse and had no interest whatsoever in another war, let alone more NATO bombs. Allegations of mass expulsions of the Albanian population by ‘Serbian’ (Yugoslav forces) began to surface, but a OSCE monitor reported no international refugees and only a couple thousand internally displaced before NATO bombing. Hundreds of thousands of Albanians would be displaced by NATO bombs, as were 100,000 Serbs (who were supposed to be the perpetrators of the genocidal ethnic cleansing).[36] One Albanian woman crossing into Macedonia put it bluntly and told a news crew “There were no Serbs. We were frightened of the bombs.”[37] Allegations of systematic, mass rapes and ‘possible sites of mass graves’ were made. One NATO spokesperson alleged that the 200,000 Albanian women in refugee camps amazingly gave birth to 100,000 babies in the span of 60 days, apparently due to ‘Serbian mass rapes’. Genocide allegations were popular; vastly different figures of 100,000, 500,000, 225,000, and 10,000 dead or missing were made by the U.S, NATO, UN, Kosovo and various NGOs. The FBI carried out an investigation across the “largest crime scene in the FBI’s… history” in June 1999. They found not hundreds of thousands of bodies, but 200 total across 30 sites.[38] Of course, the Yugoslav army, and especially Serbian paramilitary groups did carry out massacres and rapes – but nothing on the level of the systematic and genocidal allegations that were made to justify bombing. In fact, NATO committed a slew of war crimes in the 1999 bombing campaign – the bombing was illegal from the very beginning and was launched without the approval of the UN Security Council. The 1995 and 1999 NATO bombings aided ethnic cleansing of Serbs in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Cluster bombs were dropped on highly populated urban areas. NATO estimated 350 would be killed in the bombing of an office building in Belgrade housing TV and radio stations, and political parties – the bombs were dropped anyway. NATO insisted afterwards that the civilian deaths were ‘unintended’. NATO jets bombed a refugee convoy, killing dozens of non combatants, first trying to pin the attack on Yugoslav forces before retreating and claiming it was an ‘accident’. When a hospital was bombed, the only excuse NATO could muster was that it was actually a military barracks. Journalists who visited immediately after found only the remains of civilians and a hospital in ruins.[39] State owned and only state owned firms and factories were bombed, as were state owned housing projects, water supplies, railroads, bridges, hospitals and schools. This amounted to “privatization by bombing.”[40]A Spanish NATO pilot confirmed that NATO jets were “destroying the country, bombing it with novel weapons, toxic nerve gases, surface mines dropped with parachute, bombs containing uranium, black napalm, sterilization chemicals, sprayings to poison the crops and [more]”, going on to call it “one of the biggest barbarities that can be committed against humanity.”[41] The situation in the former Yugoslavia has not improved since the NATO’s ‘democracy’ bombs were dropped. The FRY finally collapsed in 2006 and the Balkans have been Balkanized once again. ‘Yugonostalgia’ has swept across the Balkans – many remember the days of the SFRY as ones where they lived better.[42] [43] [44] As many as 81% of Serbians believe they lived best in the age of socialism.[45]  Similar trends exist in Slovenia, Bosnia, and Macedonia. [46] [47] [48] "
NATO & the Humanitarian Dismemberment of Yugoslavia
Counterpunch, 17 May 2016

'As You Sow So Shall You Reap'
NATO Sided With Jihadists In Yugoslavia Who Later Conducted 9/11 And 7/7 Attacks

"The War on Terror suffered a major blow three years before it was ever announced. It happened when the people of this democracy [in America] were misled into attacking the sovereign, emerging post-Communist democracy of Yugoslavia - over rumors of genocide and ethnic cleansing that proved false.  In so doing, we put the final touch on delivering the Balkans to al Qaeda. Today we are being asked to seal that historical blunder, whose repercussions seven years later are only escalating as those we 'rescued' turn their weapons against UN and NATO forces. While NATO spends most of its time rooting out terror cells in Kosovo and Bosnia—which served as the logistics bases for the London and Madrid bombings--the 2006 deadline to complete our eagerly forgotten debacle and determine the province’s final status is fast approaching.... [Deputy commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army Niam Behljulji, known as Hulji], according to the December issue of the Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy journal, is the man who supplied the Semtex-like explosives used in the London and Madrid attacks.  But to perpetuate the version of events we were sold from the beginning, all these connections have gone purposefully unmade by our nation’s 'journalists,' who were gung-ho supporters of our 1999 offensive against a historical ally and the culmination of our pro-terror policies in 1990s Yugoslavia.... Only Britain's Sky News has caught on, in December airing a segment entitled 'The Hidden Army of Radical Islam,' about Bosnia, where there is 'growing radicalization' and a base for Al Qaeda:  'In the heart of Europe, thousands of Arab fighters. Zenica [Bosnia], 1995. They come to wage holy war in support of the Bosnian Army. [Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic shown welcoming the mujahadeen.] ...They committed many atrocities; the tapes Sky News has obtained include beheadings and signs of torture. …This isn’t just about history; it's about now. Western intelligence agencies are now pressing the Bosnians to look into exactly where these people are and what they are doing, and asking have any of these men been in contact with the three young Bosnian Muslims arrested last month on terrorism charges. ...In Sarajevo now the influence of Saudi ideas can be found all over the city. ...Radical Islam is attempting to plant deep roots in the community. …The seeds for change were planted back in 1995.'... The narration continues: 'There were some serious players sent to Bosnia, among them the man who planned 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohamed...'  A similar picture began to emerge in Kosovo, where the late Wall St. Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was uncovering that 'Ethnic-Albanian militants, humanitarian organizations, NATO and the news media fed off each other to give genocide rumors credibility.' The anti-Serb propaganda which misled Americans throughout  the 90s and which Daniel Pearl was debunking continues to guide our perceptions and foreign policy in the Balkans today. But despite the media’s blackout on the subject of Balkans terror--including by Pearl's own Wall St. Journal--more and more Americans have been scratching their heads, wondering why we forcibly precluded the Serbs from doing in their own backyard what we’ve gone halfway around the globe to do.... For the past four years, the Hague's International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has been finding what multiple international forensic teams have found--that claims of Serb 'atrocities' were exaggerated and often invented. It turns out we confused an attempt to create an Islamic 'Greater Albania' with one to create a 'Greater Serbia.' Surely if the latter were Slobodan Milosevic’s goal, he would have started by ethnically cleansing the nearly 300,000 Muslims of Serbia. Though he built his career in whatever dirty ways Tito's Yugoslavia allowed, he was the least of the Balkans' villains. For most Serbs, he was not a hero until he was called upon to defend an entire nation at the Hague. Now that Milosevic is dead, we are spared the worldwide riots that would have ensued had the tribunal mustered the courage to issue a verdict based on the evidence. And we can all sleep comfortably as the disproved charges are accepted as history.... In early 2001, German TV broadcast a report titled 'It Began with a Lie,' which publicized the findings of the observer force Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)  that no genocide had taken place in Kosovo. The revelations set off a huge public debate in Germany, a member of the NATO coalition, after the public realized their country had been party to a hoax, and they held the responsible politicians’ feet to the fire. It’s long past time that we also set the record straight on what we 'achieved' in the Balkans -- and change course. As the world closes in on the Serbs again this year, we must stop bin Laden from establishing a terror state in Europe. We know from Madrid and London that we’ll pay for it with our own blood. In fact, we already have."
A Balkan Base For Al Qaeda?
FrontPageMagazine, 20 March 2006

"During an interview on Fox TV this summer, the former US federal prosecutor John Loftus reported that British intelligence had used the al-Muhajiroun group in London to recruit Islamist militants with British passports for the war against the Serbs in Kosovo. Since July Scotland Yard has been interested in an alleged member of al-Muhajiroun, Haroon Rashid Aswat, who some sources have suggested could have been behind the London bombings [7/7]. According to Loftus, Aswat was detained in Pakistan after leaving Britain, but was released after 24 hours. He was subsequently returned to Britain from Zambia, but has been detained solely for extradition to the US, not for questioning about the London bombings. Loftus claimed that Aswat is a British-backed double agent, pursued by the police but protected by MI6. One British Muslim of Pakistani origin radicalised by the civil war in Yugoslavia was LSE-educated Omar Saeed Sheikh..... This is all the more remarkable when this is the same Omar Sheikh who, at the behest of General Mahmood Ahmed, head of the ISI, wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the leading 9/11 hijacker, before the New York attacks, as confirmed by Dennis Lormel, director of FBI's financial crimes unit. Yet neither Ahmed nor Omar appears to have been sought for questioning by the US about 9/11."
Michael Meacher, former UK Environment Minister
Britain now faces its own blowback
Guardian, 10 September 2005

"Italian police broke up an alleged jihadist cell in Venice who had celebrated last week’s terrorist attack in London and planned to blow up the city’s famous Rialto Bridge in the hope of killing hundreds of tourists. In a series of overnight raids, anti-terrorism police arrested three suspects, all of them Kosovars who were living in Italy. Fisnik Bekaj, 24, Dake Haziraj, 25, and Arian Babaj, 27, were allegedly admirers of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) and were secretly recorded discussing how they were ready to die for the sake of jihad. A fourth person, an unnamed minor also originally from Kosovo, was detained....Around 300 Kosovars have gone to fight with Islamist groups in Syria and Iraq, including Isil and al-Nusra Front. Kosovo once had the dubious distinction of producing the highest number, per capita, of “foreign fighters” of any country in Europe.  The number of Kosovars joining extremist groups has waned in the last year, partly as a result of the government cracking down on recruitment by radical imams and partly because of an education campaign. In November, Italy expelled a 24-year-old Kosovar with alleged links to terrorism. Gaffur Dibrani had lived near the town of Brescia for a decade and had alleged ties to a Moroccan extremist who joined Isil. Also in November, Kosovan authorities arrested 19 people with alleged links to Isil who were suspected of plotting attacks in Kosovo and against the Israeli football team in a World Cup qualifier against Albania. In December, German authorities arrested two brothers from Kosovo on suspicion of planning an attack on a shopping centre in the city of Oberhausen near the Dutch border. The arrests came a few days after the Berlin terrorist attack, in which Anis Amri, a Tunisian, drove a truck into a Christmas market. He was later shot dead by police in Italy."
Italian police break up alleged jihadist cell that planned to attack Venice's Rialto Bridge
Telegraph, 30 March 2017

Full Archive Of Press And Other Reports
NATO Backed Islamic Terrorism In The Balkans

"The UK Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) was also aware of the American secret arms supplies to the ABiH [the Bosnian Muslim Army]. According to a British intelligence official, the DIS never made an issue of them, so as not to further damage the sensitive relationship with the US services. An internal DIS analysis concluded that the arms were delivered via 'a different network', and that the entire operation was probably led by the NSC [National Security Council].....  the DIS received a direct order from the British government not to investigate this affair. This was not permitted for the simple reason that the matter was too sensitive in the framework of American-British relations. The DIS also obtained intelligence on the secret supplies to the ABiH from the German military intelligence service and the Bundesnachrichtendienst, because some of the flights departed from Frankfurt. However, no American-German alliance existed in the matter of clandestine support to the ABiH."
Srebrenica - A Safe Area?
Appendix II - Intelligence and the war in Bosnia 1992 – 1995: The role of the intelligence and security services
Chapter 4, Secret arms supplies and other covert actions
Report Published on Behalf of The Dutch Government, 10 April 2002

"The goal in Kosovo was to limit Serbia's geographic influence and to ignite a chain of events that would lead to Milosevic's ouster. Those goals were achieved: Milosevic was forced from power in the fall of 2000, largely because of a chain of events stemming from that war. His ouster, as I wrote in The New York Times on Oct. 6, 2000, meant the de facto death of the last ruling Communist Party in Europe, even if in its final years it had adopted national-fascism as a tactic."
Robert D. Kaplan - Syria and the Limits of Comparison
Stratfor, 28 August 2013

"Twenty years ago, the United States had little interest in relations with Russia, and certainly not with resetting them. The Soviet Union had collapsed, the Russian Federation was in ruins and it was not taken seriously by the United States -- or anywhere else for that matter. The Russians recall this period with bitterness. In their view, under the guise of teaching the Russians how to create a constitutional democracy and fostering human rights, the United States and Europe had engaged in exploitative business practices and supported non-governmental organizations that wanted to destabilize Russia. The breaking point came during the Kosovo crisis. Slobodan Milosevic, leader of what was left of Yugoslavia, was a Russian ally. Russia had a historic relationship with Serbia, and it did not want to see Serbia dismembered, with Kosovo made independent. There were three reasons for this. First, the Russians denied that there was a massacre of Albanians in Kosovo. There had been a massacre by Serbians in Bosnia; the evidence of a massacre in Kosovo was not clear and is still far from clear. Second, the Russians did not want European borders to change. There had been a general agreement that forced changes in borders should not happen in Europe, given its history, and the Russians were concerned that restive parts of the Russian Federation, from Chechnya to Karelia to Pacific Russia, might use the forced separation of Serbia and Kosovo as a precedent for dismembering Russia. In fact, they suspected that was the point of Kosovo. Third, and most important, they felt that an attack without U.N. approval and without Russian support should not be undertaken both under international law and out of respect for Russia. President Bill Clinton and some NATO allies went to war nevertheless.... When many former Soviet countries experienced revolutions in the 1990s that created governments that were somewhat more democratic but certainly more pro-Western and pro-American, Russia saw the West closing in. The turning point came in Ukraine, where the Orange Revolution generated what seemed to Putin a pro-Western government in 2004. Ukraine was the one country that, if it joined NATO, would make Russia indefensible and would control many of its pipelines to Europe. In Putin's view, the non-governmental organizations helped engineer this, and he claimed that U.S. and British intelligence services funded those organizations. To Putin, the actions in Ukraine indicated that the United States in particular was committed to extending the collapse of the Soviet Union to a collapse of the Russian Federation. Kosovo was an insult from his point of view. The Orange Revolution was an attack on basic Russian interests."
Syria, America and Putin's Bluff
Stratfor, 10 September 2013

"Last month, the German ARD television network broadcast a report entitled, 'It All Began With a Lie.' The main thesis of the program, which was first aired on February 8 and then rebroadcast on February 19, was that high officials of the German ruling SPD-Green coalition used fabrications and manipulation of facts in order to counter the growing public opposition of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. The report was damning enough to be the subject of a German Bundestag debate on February 16, and current Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer were especially taken to task for having misled the German public into believing that Yugoslav forces were committing 'genocide' against the Kosovo Albanians and that the only reason that NATO was intervening was out of  'humanitarian' grounds. Perhaps even more fascinating than the said ministers’ exposed falsehoods was a statement made by a German political figure during a live debate following the report’s second airing. Willy Wimmer, a defense policy official with the opposition Christian Democratic Union recalled a defense policy conference he had attended in Bratislava after the bombing and the strikingly direct explanation for NATO’s intervention given by an American defense spokesman at the conference. The spokesman said: 'We waged that war because we have to undo the strategic mistake Eisenhower made in 1943-44.' What was that mistake? During this critical period, the Allies made the fatal-for-the-Balkans decision to withdraw their support from the only truly Western-oriented military resistance movement on the territory of German-occupied Yugoslavia, the overwhelmingly Serb Yugoslav Army in the Homeland, led by General Draza Mihailovic, who had made the cover of Time magazine in 1941 as 'Europe’s First Guerilla.' Instead, the Allies threw their support (and arms and propaganda aid) to the communist Partisan movement, led by subsequent Yugoslav dictator, Josip Broz, better known as Tito. Years later, it turned out that the Allies had been misled by Soviet intelligence moles within their own ranks (specifically, within British Intelligence), including the infamous Kim Philby, into thinking that the Partisans were doing the fighting against the Germans, while Mihailovic’s forces were 'collaborating.' Actually, it had been the other way around, but the disinformation accomplished its task. The well-armed communist forces combined with the oncoming Red Army and Yugoslavia was lost for the West. Mihailovic was hunted down by Tito’s forces and, after a show-trial proving his 'treason,' executed in July 1946, despite strong objections from many Western governments. The fact that President Truman awarded him a posthumous medal was little consolation both for Mihailovic and the Serb nation that, despite being the first to rise in the name of freedom, had fallen under communist slavery. All this is very important for understanding the dynamic of U.S. actions in the Balkans in the 1990s and the implications of those actions today. During the post-World War II period, while Yugoslavia was lost to the West as a democratic country, it did come to serve a useful purpose as a buffer between the Iron Curtain and Western Europe, thanks to Tito’s subsequent rupture with Stalin. This was all very useful until the arrival of Gorbachev and the crumbling of the Berlin Wall that soon followed. Yugoslavia had lost its purpose and could be done away with, at least as a communist entity. Thus, then-U.S. Ambassador to Yugoslavia, Warren Zimmerman, could openly state in a January 1992 interview given to the Croatian newspaper Danas: 'We are aiming for a dissolution of Yugoslavia into independent states peacefully.' Nine years of bloody war later, we have seen just how 'peaceful' this dissolution has been. And, of course, it is to be wondered just how such a statement has escaped the attention of all the newfangled globalist international law 'experts' who are currently howling for the arrest of 'war crimes' suspects and their extradition to the Hague Tribunal. For the Ambassador’s statement was a call for a direct violation of the 1975 Helsinki Accords, which guaranteed the integrity of international borders.... Now, it is fair to say that the U.S. did not lead the process of Yugoslavia’s dissolution. The main actor in this process was the newly reunified Germany — which practically blackmailed the rest of Western Europe into recognizing the breakaway republics of Slovenia and Croatia — in return for accepting the Maastricht Treaty that has led the looser European Community into becoming the ever-more tightly knit European Union. Still, Germany was hoping to extend its influence by forming new client states. However, the EU was unable to extinguish the fire the Germans had started and the wars of succession dragged on and took more and more lives. The U.S. stepped fully into the picture, bombed the Bosnian Serbs in 1994 and 1995 in order to strike some sort of a balance in Bosnia, and forged the Dayton Accords of December 1995, which were supposed to end the Yugoslav conflict. The U.S. has been in the driver’s seat in the Balkans ever since, but peace has not arrived. Five-and-a-half years after the Dayton 'peace,' under the noses of a 40,000+ NATO force in Kosovo, a new war is threatening to break out. As for Bosnia, it is a clinically dead state held together only by the almost-dictatorial powers of its High Commissioner and the NATO forces on the ground."
Lies and mysteries revealed
WorldNetDaily, 10 March 2001

"A blizzard of platitudes has been unleashed by Europe's leaders this week as Serbia formally applies for EU membership. No opportunity to declare the occasion 'historic' or to assert that Serbia has a European 'vocation' is being passed up. Yet once these asinine buzzwords have been uttered, there will be no reason to rejoice. Belgrade's treatment by some EU governments has long been characterised by a brazen hypocrisy. Until the beginning of this month, the Netherlands was blocking Serbia's efforts to strengthen its relations with the union over suspicions it was not co-operating fully with the war crimes tribunal in the Hague. The zeal of Maxime Verhagen, the Dutch foreign minister, in insisting on accountability for offences against humanity would be praiseworthy if it was consistent with his approach to other conflicts. How odd it is, then, that Verhagen has vigorously opposed efforts to probe (never mind prosecute) alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza. With just two of the men on its wanted list – Ratko Mladic and Goran Hadzic – still at large, isn't it time that the Hague tribunal was given a fresh mandate, or even better that an entirely new investigative body is set up? This body should be tasked with finally unearthing the truth about why Nato bombed Serbia in 1999. None of the alliance's personnel has yet been charged by an international tribunal with crimes relating to that war, even though it was conducted with the use of cluster bombs, weapons that literally slice the limbs of their victims. Nor should it be forgotten that the war lacked UN approval and helped usher in the dubious concept of 'humanitarian intervention', under which military action can be taken on the flimsiest of pretexts. I'm sure that I will soon hear or read some federalist (or should I say fantasist?) trying to wax lyrical about the significance of Serbia embracing countries that were attacking it little over a decade ago. What the fantasists won't acknowledge, though, is that Slobodan Milosevic, Serbia's then president, didn't earn his status as a favourite bogeyman of the west purely because he did dreadful things to the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo, as the official narrative would have us believe. The west could probably have tolerated his autocratic streak if he was more favourable to its pervading ideology. But Milosevic's refusal to accept the neoliberal precepts on which the global economy is being run seem to offer a more plausible explanation as to why Bill Clinton and his then cronies in Europe insisted he must go. Such a conclusion seems to me inescapable when you examine the fine print of what the EU and America have been pressing Serbia to do over the past 10 years. Privatising state-owned industry is now a standard condition of EU accession, as many countries in central and eastern Europe have discovered, often at enormous social cost. But what makes Serbia unique is that many of the facilities it has been required to sell off were first damaged by Nato bombs, with the result that western firms could snatch some of them up at bargain basement prices. More than 1,800 privatisations have occurred since Milosevic was ousted; much of the country's metal industry is now in the hands of US Steel, which has been busy shedding jobs, while the national car company Zastava has been bought by Fiat."
David Cronin - Grim reality of Serbia's EU 'dream'
Guardian, 'Comment Is Free', 22 December 2009

"The terms of the Rambouillet Accords demonstrated a reluctance to achieve a negotiated peace settlement acceptable to all sides. As ex-secretary of state Henry Kissinger insisted, 'the Rambouillet text, which called on Serbia to admit Nato troops throughout Yugoslavia, was a provocation, an excuse to start bombing'....Though justified by apparently humanitarian considerations, Nato's bombing of Serbia succeeded only in escalating the Kosovo crisis into a full-scale humanitarian catastrophe. It is now widely acknowledged that the bulk of the ethnic cleansing and war crimes occurred after the start of Nato's campaign, with an OSCE inquiry highlighting 'the patterns of the expulsions and the vast increase in lootings, killings, rape, kidnappings and pillage once the Nato air war began on March 24'.....though these much-vaunted humanitarian objectives were used to build widespread public support for Nato's intervention, Strobe Talbott, the former US deputy secretary of state, has written how 'it was Yugoslavia's resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform – not the plight of the Kosovar Albanians – that best explains Nato's war'. Placing outwardly humanitarian or security-related motives at the service of political and economic objectives has done much to undermine the emerging notion of the 'responsibility to protect' by breeding scepticism about the ultimate goal of such intervention....Pre-intervention portrayals of the conflict in Kosovo were not, however, a failure of intelligence, but an act of willing deceit; designed to reduce the conflict to terms that betrayed the complexity of a situation involving a previously designated terrorist organisation, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), and a heavy-handed state security infrastructure which had been for decades contending with ethnically-motivated crimes in Kosovo. Detailed reports by Amnesty International suggesting that the death toll was in the hundreds did little to deter talk of an on-going genocide. The media and NGOs, meanwhile, did little to challenge Tony Blair's portrayal of the war as 'a battle between good and evil; between civilisation and barbarity; between democracy and dictatorship'....In bypassing the United Nations, engaging in disingenuous negotiations that precluded diplomatic solutions and manipulating the public case for war, Nato's intervention over Kosovo in 1999 was an important precursor to the invasion of Iraq in 2003."
Serbia's anniversary is a timely reminder
Guardian, Comment Is Free, 24 March 2009

"The trigger for the US-led bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 was, according to the standard western version of history, the failure of the Serbian delegation to sign up to the Rambouillet peace agreement. But that holds little more water than the tale that has Iraq responsible for last year's invasion by not cooperating with weapons inspectors. The secret annexe B of the Rambouillet accord - which provided for the military occupation of the whole of Yugoslavia - was, as the Foreign Office minister Lord Gilbert later conceded to the defence select committee, deliberately inserted to provoke rejection by Belgrade. But equally revealing about the west's wider motives is chapter four, which dealt exclusively with the Kosovan economy. Article I (1) called for a 'free-market economy', and article II (1) for privatisation of all government-owned assets. At the time, the rump Yugoslavia - then not a member of the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO or European Bank for Reconstruction and Development - was the last economy in central-southern Europe to be uncolonised by western capital. 'Socially owned enterprises', the form of worker self-management pioneered under Tito, still predominated. Yugoslavia had publicly owned petroleum, mining, car and tobacco industries, and 75% of industry was state or socially owned. In 1997, a privatisation law had stipulated that in sell-offs, at least 60% of shares had to be allocated to a company's workers. The high priests of neo-liberalism were not happy. At the Davos summit early in 1999, Tony Blair berated Belgrade, not for its handling of Kosovo, but for its failure to embark on a programme of 'economic reform' - new-world-order speak for selling state assets and running the economy in the interests of multinationals. In the 1999 Nato bombing campaign, it was state-owned companies - rather than military sites - that were specifically targeted by the world's richest nations. Nato only destroyed 14 tanks, but 372 industrial facilities were hit - including the Zastava car plant at Kragujevac, leaving hundreds of thousands jobless. Not one foreign or privately owned factory was bombed. After the removal of Slobodan Milosevic, the west got the 'fast-track' reforming government in Belgrade it had long desired. One of the first steps of the new administration was to repeal the 1997 privatisation law and allow 70% of a company to be sold to foreign investors - with just 15% reserved for workers. The government then signed up to the World Bank's programmes - effectively ending the country's financial independence."
The Spoils of Another War
Guardian, 21 September 2004

"The US goal was to assist the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Yet the year before, the US state department had branded the KLA a terrorist organisation, financing its operations from the heroin trade and funds from Islamic countries and individuals, including Osama bin Laden. As James Bissett, the former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia, has subsequently reported: 'This did not stop the US from arming and training KLA members in Albania and sending them back into Kosovo to assassinate Serbian mayors, ambush Serbian policemen and intimidate hesitant Kosovo Albanians ... Despite a UN arms embargo, and with the support of the US, arms, ammunition and thousands of fighters were smuggled into Bosnia to help the Muslims ... Bin Laden and his network were also active in Kosovo, and KLA members trained in his camps in Afghanistan and Albania.' According to reports in April 1999, assistance was also provided by Britain's SAS. Through much of the 1990s, US support for Islamic militants in former Yugoslavia was backed up by covert US airdrops of arms, especially at Tuzla in northern Bosnia. These took place in the face of Operation Deny Flight, the UN-imposed and Nato-policed no-fly zone over Bosnia. The US House of Representatives also failed to authorise the war under the War Powers Act, making it illegal (shades of Iraq). But the airdrops were only the tip of the iceberg. Retired US officers heading Military Professional Resources Inc, a private paramilitary firm based in Virginia, planned the bloody Croatian 'liberation' of the Serb-held Krajina enclave, which resulted in the ethnic cleansing of 200,000 Serbs.   US goals in the use of the KLA as a proxy force, similar to the funding of the Contras against the leftwing Sandinista government in Nicaragua in the 1980s, were partly to remove Milosevic and break up Yugoslavia as one of the remaining Communist regimes. But related motives were to break Russia's monopoly over oil and gas transport routes and secure pro-western governments in the strategic Black Sea-Caspian Sea oil-rich basin. A crucial oil corridor, called the Trans-Balkan pipeline, designed to become the main route to the west for oil and gas extracted in central Asia, was to run from the Black Sea to the Adriatic via Bulgaria, Macedonia near the border with Kosovo, and Albania. Another was to run across Serbia to Adriatic ports in Croatia and Italy, fed by a pipeline running from a Black Sea port in Romania. The implications of this are stark."
Michael Meacher, former UK Environment Minister
The path to friendship goes via the oil and gas fields
Guardian, 27 March 2004

"A new and potentially explosive Great Game is being set up and few in Britain are aware of it. There are many players: far more than the two - Russia and Britain - who were engaged a century ago in imperial rivalry in central Asia and the north-west frontier. And the object this time is not so much control of territory. It is the large reserves of oil and gas in the Caucasus, notably the Caspian basin. Pipelines are the counters in this new Great Game. There are plans for pipe-lines through Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Iran, Bulgaria, Macedonia - and Albania. Traditional rivalries between east and west are complicated by other threats - from Chechen separatists, Kurds, Albanian guerrilla groups, the dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh and, throughout the region, Islamic groups whose activities are causing deep concern to Moscow, Tehran and Washington alike. 'In addition to instability and conflict in the Caucasus and parts of central Asia, there is a longer-term fear that Russia may rebuild its military capabilities, perhaps under a strongly nationalist regime,' notes Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at Bradford University, in his recent book, Losing Control. Such a fear he adds, 'rarely recognises the significance of a near-endemic Russian perception that Nato expansion and US commercial interests in the Caspian basin are part of a strategic encroachment into Russia's historic sphere of influence'. This is the region both west and east have their eyes on. It is rich in untapped oil and gas while US reserves are running down, China is desperate for more oil, and no one outside the Gulf wants to rely on Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or Iraq - which have the biggest oil reserves. Oil is the bait as the US, Russia, Turkey, Iran - and Nato - jockey for alliances, power and influence in this highly combustible but, for most people, little-known, region. The EU is now getting in on the act. 'The European Union cannot afford to neglect the southern Caucasus. Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan form a strategic corridor linking southern Europe with central Asia,' Chris Patten, the European external relations commissioner, and Anna Lindh, the Swedish foreign minister, told Financial Times readers last month before the first high-level EU visit to the region. 'There is perhaps as much oil under the Caspian sea as under the North sea and a huge amount of gas there and in central Asia - good news for energy-hungry Europe,' they said. Soon after the EU visit, Georgia's president, Eduard Shevardnadze, welcomed European and US support for the 'Great Silk Road idea'. The plan, backed by Washington and American oil companies, including Chevron, is for a pipeline taking Turkmenistan and Kazakh oil to Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, through Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, and through eastern Turkey to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. Russia is desperate to maintain oil flows through its territory. Iran wants a pipeline running from the Caspian due south. China wants one going due east. There is also a plan, backed by the US, for a pipeline running from the Bulgarian Black sea port of Burgas through Macedonia to the Albanian Adriatic port of Vlore. The idea is for Caspian oil to be shipped to Burgas by tanker from the Black sea ports of Novorossiysk in Russia and Supsa in Georgia.... While the US and Nato - and now the EU - hold out the prospect of untold wealth for the Caucasian states of the former Soviet Union, the west will also have an important economic stake in Albania and Macedonia. The US already seems to take the view that all Serbs are bad and all Albanians good. The implications for Kosovo, a Serbian province with an overwhelming ethnic Albanian population, and for Macedonia, with armed groups from Kosovo stirring up trouble among the ethnic Albanian population, are potentially immense....Watch this space."
The new Great Game - East and west are jockeying for influence in the Caucasus. The prize is oil and gas
Guardian, 5 March 2001

“How much should we spend on the armed services? ... My view is we don’t spend on you, we invest in you. The men and women in the armed services are not a drain on our economic strength. Indeed you safeguard it. You’re not a burden on our economy, you are the critical foundation for growth.”
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
addressing US troops at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, 5 June 2001
US Defense Department Press Release

"This is about America's energy security. It's also about preventing strategic inroads by those who don't share our values. We're trying to move these newly independent countries toward the west. We would like to see them reliant on western commercial and political interests rather than going another way. We've made a substantial political investment in the Caspian, and it's very important to us that both the pipeline map and the politics come out right."
Bill Richardson 1998, US energy secretary, on US policy on the extraction and transport of Caspian oil
'A discreet deal in the pipeline - Nato mocked those who claimed there was a plan for Caspian oil'
Guardian, 15 February 2001

"During the 1999 Balkans war, some of the critics of Nato's intervention alleged that the western powers were seeking to secure a passage for oil from the Caspian sea. This claim was widely mocked.... [However] For the past few weeks, a freelance researcher called Keith Fisher has been doggedly documenting a project which has, as far as I can discover, has been little-reported in any British, European or American newspaper. It is called the Trans-Balkan pipeline, and it's due for approval at the end of next month. Its purpose is to secure a passage for oil from the Caspian sea. The line will run from the Black sea port of Burgas to the Adriatic at Vlore, passing through Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania. It is likely to become the main route to the west for the oil and gas now being extracted in central Asia. It will carry 750,000 barrels a day: a throughput, at current prices, of some $600m a month. The project is necessary, according to a paper published by the US Trade and Development Agency last May, because the oil coming from the Caspian sea 'will quickly surpass the safe capacity of the Bosphorus as a shipping lane'. The scheme, the agency notes, will 'provide a consistent source of crude oil to American refineries', 'provide American companies with a key role in developing the vital east-west corridor', 'advance the privatisation aspirations of the US government in the region' and 'facilitate rapid integration' of the Balkans 'with western Europe'...."
George Monbiot - 'A discreet deal in the pipeline - Nato mocked those who claimed there was a plan for Caspian oil'
Guardian, 15 February 2001

"Albania, Bulgaria and Macedonia have given the go ahead for the construction of a $1.2bn oil pipeline that will pass through the Balkan peninsula. The project aims to allow alternative ports for the shipping of Russian and Caspian oil, that normally goes through the Bosphorus straits.   It aims to transport 750,000 daily barrels of oil. The pipeline will be built by the US-registered Albanian Macedonian Bulgarian Oil Corporation (AMBO). The pipeline will run for nearly 900 kilometres from the Bulgarian port of Burgas, over the Black Sea to the Albanian city of Vlore on the Adriatic coast, crossing Macedonia.... According to AMBO president Edward Ferguson, work on the pipeline will begin in 2005 and it is expected to be ready in three or four years. He added that the company had already raised about $900m from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) - a US development agency - the Eximbank and Credit Suisse First Boston, among others."
Go-ahead for Balkan oil pipeline
BBC Online, 28 December 2004

"On June 2, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency announced it had awarded the $588,000 grant to Bulgaria to carry out a feasibility study for the pipeline. Under the proposed plan, Caspian oil would be shipped by tanker from the Black Sea ports of Novorossiysk in Russia and from Supsa in former Soviet Georgia and then pumped by overland pipeline across Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania to waiting European consumers. 'The continuing conflicts in Yugoslavia have made [the proposed trans-Balkan line] appear impractical in past years. But the prospect that the U.S. government would guarantee security in the region ... now makes it a much more attractive proposition. This grant represents a significant step forward for this policy (of multiple pipeline routes) and for U.S. business interests in the Caspian region,' said TDA Director J. Joseph Grandmaison. The decision came shortly before NATO and Russia reached agreement on how to force an end to the Kosovo conflict. The decision has raised speculation among regional experts that it may be part of a larger economic development plan envisioned by the Clinton administration to stabilize the southern Balkans after the massive dislocations and infrastructure damage caused by the Serbian repression in Kosovo and the U.S.-led NATO bombing of Serbia. The new strategic importance of the trans-Balkans region to U.S. policy makers could now justify its designation as a Main Export Pipeline for Caspian oil. The continuing conflicts in Yugoslavia have made it appear impractical in past years. But the prospect that the U.S. government would guarantee security in the region and also provide financial guarantees now makes it a much more attractive proposition... The Bulgaria-Macedonia-Albania route has already won support in Moscow and from the Chevron-led Caspian Pipeline Consortium that is developing the Caspian-Kazakhstan oil deposits. The main export line for Caspian crude will run through Russian territory to the Black Sea deposit at Novorossiysk and then by oil tankers to consumers."
Looking at Balkans route for Caspian crude
United Press International, 23 June 1999

"The `AMBO' Corporation (Pound Ridge, NY) has announced, on 17th January 1997, that Mr. E.L. (Ted) Ferguson - formerly Director of Oil & Gas Development for Europe and Africa for `Brown & Root Energy Services' has joined `AMBO' as President & CEO.... The `AMBO' Corporation (an acronym for the `Albanian- Macedonian-Bulgarian Oil Corporation') is the project developer of the 826 million $ Trans-Balkan Oil Pipeline which will carry crude oil from the Bulgarian Black Sea port of Bourgas to the Albanian Adriatic Sea port of Vlor....The feasibility study for `AMBO's ` Trans-Balkan Oil Pipeline, conducted by the international engineering company of `Brown & Root Ltd.' in London.... The resulting pipeline will become a part of the region's critical East-West corridor infrastructure which includes highway, railway, gas and fiber optic telecommunications lines. This pipeline will bring oil directly to the European market by eliminating tanker traffic through the ecologically sensitive waters of the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas."
M I L S N E W S
Skopje, 23 January, 1997

"Mediterranean refiners are suffering shortages of crude oil as Turkish security restrictions and bad weather cause a traffic jam of tankers carrying Russian oil through the straits of the Bosporus and Dardanelles... The congestion threatens a supply crunch similar to that experienced by European refiners during the Gulf war of 1991.... The jam has forced Russian producers to halt one pipeline sending oil to the Black Sea because storage tanks are full and tanker loadings are delayed. 'The Bosporus problem is hitting very hard,' said one refiner in Spain. The transit route of the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits, one of the most important export points for Russia, Europe's biggest supplier, is known for problems and delays. But the delays this year are compounded by the fact that refiners can no longer rely on the Iraqi substitute for Russian oil. Kirkuk oil, from Iraq's northern oilfields, resembles Russia's Urals oil. But Kirkuk, which is transported by pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, has not been available since March because of the sabotage of Iraq's section of the pipeline."
Bosporus tanker jam threatens shortage of oil
Financial Times, 11 January 2004

"As Alvaro González, captain of the Bosco Tapias, waited three weeks for a 30-vessel traffic jam to clear so he could begin the treacherous journey through the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits, he used the time to get his 274-meter oil tanker shipshape.... The reason for the delays, of up to 25 days since the start of the gridlock in the Turkish straits in December, is a mix of environmental, security and geopolitical factors which few industries other than oil face to such a degree....Collisions and groundings are the most frequent accidents for a waterway that at its narrowest point could not fit a tanker lengthwise. The doubling of oil exports from Russia in eight years, and the rush of oil expected from the Caspian have worried Turkish authorities and international oil companies, whose reputations ride on their safety record...This battle over control of the Caspian's oil and natural gas riches has raged since the early 1990s, with the US backing a system of pipelines that would bypass Iran as well as reduce Moscow's grip over countries such as Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan."
Geopolitics slows tankers' passage in busy Bosporus
Financial Times, 11 January 2004

"As the region stabilizes, the Balkans may play an important role as a transit center for Russian and Caspian Sea region oil exports... the region is becoming more important as a transit center for Russian and Caspian Sea region oil exports to Western consumers."
US Energy Information Administration - Statement on Balkans October 2002

"Today, the circumstances which we have created here have changed. Today, it is absolutely necessary to guarantee the stability of Macedonia and its entry into NATO. But we will certainly remain here a long time so that we can also guarantee the security of the energy corridors which traverse this country."
General Michael Jackson, commander of KFOR in Macedonia
Italian daily, Sole 24 Ore, 13 April 1999

"The routes of potential trans-Balkan oil pipelines were laid down according to the interests of their future [EU and US] users....The territory of Yugoslavia (both former and present federation) is significant, therefore, because of its geographic position. Influential American analysts insist on the claim that Yugoslavia is in the immediate neighborhood of a zone of vital US interests - Black Sea/Caspian Sea region. And wherever there are vital US interests, there are NATO troops to protect them. European interests, claim our interlocutors, are even greater, because it is definitely not in the interest of the European Union countries that the key to their supplies is held by someone else....The project SEEL (South East European Line), initiated by the Italian company ENI is actually the corridor for transportation of Caspian oil from Constanta to Trieste, which passes through Serbia and uses the existing system of the Adriatic oil pipeline, all the way to Omisalj... Because of the political situation in Serbia this project was delayed for some better times... Until the fall of Slobodan Milosevic's regime Croatia insisted that the connection with Constanta bypass Serbia by going through Hungary [a less economic route]. However, after October 5 and the political changes in Yugoslavia, the meeting of this same group held in Brussels on October 26 and 27, 2000, expressed support for the transport of Caspian oil following the route from Black Sea, Romania, Yugoslavia and Croatia, respectively from Romanian port Constanta, through Pitesti, and Pancevo to Delnice in Croatia, from where the new pipeline would go towards Trieste and the old one continue to Omisalj on the island of Krk."
Underground Games in Kosovo
Reporter, Banja Luka, Srpska, B-H, February 27, 2001

"The project envisages construction of a new spur from Delnice to Trieste, 100 kilometers long, and conversion of the Omisalj port into the leading spot-market for resale of oil in the Mediterranean [Adriatic]..... One should recall that Milosevic did not end up in the Hague only as a war criminal, but above all because with his policies he stood in the way of a new network of Euro-Asian oil pipelines. His political fate was sealed in Zagreb, where two years ago a large ministerial-business conference of the EU INOGATE program was held. A hundred days later, Milosevic was not in power anymore, and at the time of the signing of a new oil pipeline from Constanta to Trieste he was already on the way to the Hague, supposedly by chance."
Mega Pipeline Becomes Reality
Novi List (Croatian Newspaper), 23 July 2002

"As to pipeline construction, one of the most significant of the EE/FSU projects is the $2.9 billion Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) crude oil export pipeline being built for the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Company. The 1,097-mile 42/46-inch line will transport crude from Azerbaijan and the Caspian region via Georgia to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. From Ceyhan, the crude will be transported to European and world markets. The political significance of this project has been recognized by Washington, which advocates expanding export routes even further from the region. BP, as operator of the development, expects to begin carrying crude from the first phase of the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli development in the Caspian in the first quarter of 2005. Also significant is the 745-mile Constanta-Omisalj Pipeline proposal to link Romania, Yugoslavia and Croatia. If constructed, the pipeline could open up lucrative trade routes from Central Asia to Western Europe. All three states have signed on to construct the pipeline that has a proposed route from Costanta, Romania, through Yugoslavia to an Adriatic oil terminal near Omisalj, Croatia. There is also potential for the pipeline to be extended to Trieste, Italy, and beyond. Although financing the $1 billion project may pose a challenge in today's soft economy, the U.S. is reported to be a key supporter of the project and willing to provide $200,000 to fund a study into pipeline routes. Funding is also expected from Interstate Oil and Gas Transport to Europe, (INOGATE) a ten-nation consortium funded by the European Union to develop a pipeline network stretching form Central Asia to Europe."
Pipeline & Gas Journal's 2003 International Pipeline Construction Report
Pipeline and Gas Journal, August 2003

"..the Balkans are becoming an important transit center for energy supplies from the Black Sea area and beyond to Europe"
US Energy Information Administration - Previous statement on Balkans now updated with statement of October 2002 (see top)

"The Honorable U.S. Ambassador to Croatia Lawrence Rossin and the Croatian Minister of Economy Hrvoje Vojkovic signed a US$ 202,000 Trade and Development Agency (TDA) grant to fund a feasibility study for an international oil pipeline in Southeast Europe. The Serbian Minister of Mining and Energy, Ms. Kori Udovicki ....took part in the signing ceremony in Zagreb. The oil pipeline would originate in Constanta, Romania go through Serbia and Croatia and end in Trieste, Italy."
Southeastern Europe Business Brief
Volume 7.26, July 26, 2002

"On April 8 [1999] the Party of Democratic Socialism in Germany [PDS], an opponent of the war, issued a report describing an alleged CIA covert operation named 'Operation Roots' aimed at sowing ethnic divisions in Yugoslavia to encourage its breakup. The report claimed that this operation has been going on 'since the beginning of Clinton's presidency.' It was supposedly a joint operation with the German secret service, which also sought to destabilize Yugoslavia. The final objective 'is the separation of Kosovo, with the aim of it becoming part of Albania; the separation of Montenegro, as the last means of access to the Mediterranean; and the separation of the Vojvodina, which produces most of the food for Yugoslavia. This would lead to the total collapse of Yugoslavia as a viable independent state.' The report also asserts that the KLA was founded by the CIA with funding was funneled through drug-smuggling operations in Europe."
Fun Facts About Our New Allies
The Progressive Review (Washington), 22 June 1999

"War in the former Yugoslav republics is being fuelled by a massive and complex pattern of weapons shipments to Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, funded and organized by Germany. Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy has uncovered a widespread pattern of arms shipments which have been allowed to cross into Croatia and Bosnia with the tacit approval (and sometimes, apparently, direct support) of the governments of Germany and Austria, and possibly other states. As well, Germany has pointedly ignored the movement of German nationals into Croatia and Bosnia to fight against the Serbian residents of those two former Yugoslav states. All of the activity is in direct violation of German and Austrian law as well as being in violation of international embargoes against the supply of weapons to the conflict zone. All of the actions support Germany's traditional ally, Croatia, against the Serbian populations still resident in what is now Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and against the rump of the Yugoslav Federation. The wide collection of information came to Defense & Foreign Affairs from diverse sources, including Defense & Foreign Affairs correspondents. Some, from other sources, came in written form in a variety of languages, without elaboration, often with only partial identification of some of the transactions, companies and weapons involved."
Illegal German Weapons to Croatia and Bosnia Fuel the Balkan Conflict
Defense and Foreign Affairs, Strategic Policy 31 October 1992

"General Sir Michael Rose, the former United Nations military commander in Bosnia.... said false facts about the war in Bosnia were being fed to Congress.... he was visited by General John Galvin, former Supreme Allied Commander Europe who had been appointed by President Clinton to advise on a new structure for the Bosnian Army. General Rose said: 'We were escorted by a woman from the US Embassy who, in my view, was the most hostile American I met during all my time in Bosnia.' As they flew by helicopter towards Tuzla in the north, she pointed at all the destroyed villages high in the Zvijezda mountains and 'exclaimed excitedly' to General Galvin: 'Look at what the criminal Serbs have done.' In fact, General Rose said, they were Bosnian Croat villages ethnically cleansed by the Muslim forces. Later when they visited Mostar in the south where the Croats had virtually destroyed the Muslim sector in the eastern part of the town, the US official 'planted her hands on her ample hips' and cried: 'Well, at least this was done by the criminal Serbs.' General Rose said the woman burst into tears when it was pointed out that the Croats had been to blame. 'The fact was not lost on Galvin,' he said."
US bugged me in Bosnia, says General Rose
London Times, 10 November 1998

"A more revealing report was released April 8 by Jurgen Reents, press spokes person for the Party of Democratic Socialism in Germany. The PDS received almost as many votes as the Green Party, which is part of Germany's ruling coalition. The PDS has actively opposed the NATO war on Yugoslavia. Reents said the report came from someone who holds a 'strictly confidential and high position in the offices of the German government.' The report came through a Catholic priest who has kept the individual's identity secret but has verified the person's authenticity. The report asserts that top NATO, U.S., British and German officials are 'utterly lying in public concerning almost all the facts in regard to the Balkan War.' ...The report says that the German government knows NATO consciously created the refugee crisis. For example, the report says, NATO has targeted and destroyed nearly every fresh-water facility in Kosovo. It also asserts that there are KLA units in Kosovo--one is entirely U.S. mercenaries, the other German mercenaries--who report to the military commands of those countries. Perhaps most revealing is the report's description of a CIA covert operation cynically named 'Operation Roots.' It is aimed at sowing ethnic divisions in Yugoslavia to encourage its breakup. The report says that this operation has been going on 'since the beginning of Clinton's presidency.' It is a joint operation with the German secret service, which has also sought to destabilize Yugoslavia. .. The report asserts that the KLA was founded by the CIA. And the funding was funneled through drug-smuggling operations in Europe. The authenticity of this report cannot be independently verified at this time. But much of it is consistent with what is already known. It helps to expose the real forces behind the war on Yugoslavia and shows who are the true aggressors."
Who's The KLA? - German document reveals secret CIA role
Workers World Service, April 29, 1999

"I mean Kosovo is just one of the points of destabilization of Yugoslavia... I want people to know the truth about what happened here.... The United States, for its own geopolitical reasons, deliberately encouraged the secessionist tendency among Albanians, used them against the Yugoslav government in order to destabilize the Balkans.... One book has a great hold over Kosovo Albanians. It's called the 'Canon of Leke Dukagjiniis'. It's a 15th century text that spells out codes of behavior. It goes into great detail on how to carry out blood feuds, when and whom it is proper to kill. It lays out the proper methods to use when killing, rules and regulations and so on. And this Canon is alive among Albanians today, especially since the fall of communism. This is an intensely tradition-oriented culture. Blood feud is a constant threat for Albanians.... By methodically killing those who refused to support them, the KLA was striking a deep fear among Albanians: the refusal of one Clan member to obey could lead to revenge against his entire clan. And now the KLA had NATO bombers to enforce blood feud. ... [the KLA] knew their own people, their fears, their traditions. They knew that if they could prove they were deadly, the clan leaders would fall in line. Now they live in a society dominated by gangsters. None of this would have happened were it not for years of effort by the United States."
Cedomir Prlincevic, President of the Jewish Community in Pristina, and Chief Archivist of Kosovo
Interview with 'Emperors Clothes', 3 December 2000

"Albania ... offered NATO and the U.S. an important military outpost in the turbulent southern Balkans (in the 1990-96 period Albania opened its ports and airstrips for U.S. military use and housed CIA spy planes for flights over Bosnia).... The U.S. played a major role in the DP’s 1992 electoral victory, and it then provided the new government with military, economic, and political support. In the 1991-96 period Washington directly provided Albania $236 million in economic aid, making the U.S. the second largest bilateral economic donor (following Italy).....Following Berisha’s visit to the U.S. in March 1991, Washington began supplying direct assistance to the DP, including donations of computers and cars for the 1992 electoral campaign. William Ryerson, the first U.S. ambassador, stood next to Berisha on the podium at election rallies. The U.S. failed to criticize, and at times encouraged, the new president as he purged critics of his policies within the judicial system, police, and the DP—often through illegal means. By 1993 DP loyalists and family members held most of the prominent positions in Albania’s ministries, institutes, universities, and state media. Citing the threat of communism’s return, Berisha successfully instilled fear in the population and discredited his rivals. The U.S. embassy in Albania contributed to the polarization of Albanian politics by refusing to meet most of the opposition parties (former communists as well as others) for the first two years of DP rule. This one-sided view of democratization helped Berisha dismantle most political alternatives, some of which were moderate and truly democratic. Albania had become a strategic outpost in the region, and the U.S. did not want to jeopardize its new control and political influence in the country. In 1992 Washington deployed a Military Liaison Team to the country and started outfitting the Albanian military with nonlethal equipment, technical expertise, and training. Albania was the first East European state to request NATO membership, and in February 1994 it became a member of the NATO-associated Partnership for Peace. Albania has participated in numerous military training operations with the U.S. and other NATO powers, and the CIA has used Albania as a base for air reconnaissance missions over Bosnia. In January 1995, the U.S. Army finished building a radar station in northern Albania for use by the Albanian military. In addition, Albania opened its land, marine, and airport facilities to NATO operations in the former Yugoslavia....In the volatile Balkans, the U.S. is faced with a serious crisis that it helped fuel. The raging anarchy in Albania is both a serious setback for Albania’s democratic development and a threat to regional security. In this regard, the disintegration of police and military forces has resulted in the widespread availability of weapons. These are easily purchased or stolen not only by Berisha’s opponents but also by criminal gangs and terrorist elements both inside and outside Albania. "
Albania
Foreign Policy In Focus, Volume 2, Number 33 May 1997

"For amid the present furore over the no-show of Iraqi WMDs, let us remember that in Kosovo our humanitarian Prime Minister dragged this country into an illegal, US-sponsored war on grounds which later proved to be fraudulent. In 2003 Tony's Big Whopper was that Saddam's WMDs 'could be activated within 45 minutes'. In 1999 it was that Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia was 'set on a Hitler-style genocide equivalent to the extermination of the Jews during World War Two'..... In fact, the Yugoslavs had by February 1999 already agreed to most of the autonomy proposals and had assented to a UN (but not Nato) peacekeeping team entering Kosovo..... It was the unwelcome prospect of Milosevic signing up to a peace deal and thereby depriving the US of its casus belli that caused Secretary of State Albright, with the connivance of Cook, to insert new terms into the Rambouillet accord purposely designed to be rejected by Belgrade. Appendix B to chapter seven of the document provided not only for the Nato occupation of Kosovo, but also for 'unrestricted access' for Nato aircraft, tanks and troops throughout Yugoslavia. The full text of the Rambouillet document was kept secret from the public and came to light only when published in Le Monde Diplomatique on 17 April. By this time, the war was almost a month old...The Kosovan war was, we were repeatedly told, fought 'to stop a humanitarian catastrophe'. 'It is no exaggeration to say that what is happening is racial genocide' - claimed the British Prime Minister - 'something we had hoped we would never again experience in Europe. Thousands have been murdered, 100,000 men are missing and hundreds forced to flee their homes and the country.' The Serbs were, according to the US State Department, 'conducting a campaign of forced population movement not seen in Europe since WW2'....With public support for war faltering, and a Downing Street spokesman talking of a 'public-relations meltdown', it was time for the Lie Machine to go into overdrive.... To date, the total body count of civilians killed in Kosovo in the period 1997-99 is still fewer than 3,000, a figure that includes not only those killed in open fighting and during Nato air strikes, but also an unidentified number of Serbs. Clearly it was an exaggeration - of Munchausenian proportions - for the Prime Minister to describe what happened in Kosovo as 'racial genocide'. In both Kosovo and Iraq, the government's war strategy seems to have been threefold:
1. In order to whip up public support for war, tell lies so outrageous that most people will believe that no one would have dared to make them up.
2. When the conflict is over, dismiss questions about the continued lack of evidence as 'irrelevant' and stress alternative 'benefits' from the military action, e.g., 'liberation' of the people.
3. Much later on, when the truth is finally revealed, rely on the fact that most people have lost interest and are now concentrating on the threat posed by the next new Hitler.
An admission of the government's culpability for the Kosovan war only slipped out in July 2000, when Lord Gilbert, the ex-defence minister, told the House of Commons that the Rambouillet terms offered to the Yugoslav delegation had been 'absolutely intolerable' and expressly designed to provoke war. Gilbert's bombshell warranted scarcely a line in the mainstream British media, which had been so keen to label the Yugoslavs the guilty party a year before."
How the battle lies were drawn
Spectator, 14 June 2003

"Almost before the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney called together a group of players to chart out a strategy for the post-Cold War world. The names should be familiar, because they run the present administration: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, Cheney's chief of staff. The goal was to 'shape' the world in order to, in the words of another team member, Zalmay Khalizad (now special envoy to Afghanistan), 'preclude the rise of another global rival for the indefinite future.' In his book 'From Containment to Global Leadership?' Khalizad argues that it is 'vital' to prevent such a rival from developing and 'to be willing to use force if necessary.'.."
Are we on the road to war?
The San Francisco Examiner, 19 April 2002

"The greatest untapped oil reserves in the world are located in the former Soviet republics bordering the Caspian Sea (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan)...... This is the fuel that is feeding renewed militarism and must lead to new wars of conquest .... This is the key to understanding the bellicosity of US foreign policy over the past decade. The bombardment of Yugoslavia is the latest in a series of wars of aggression that have spanned the globe. Though they had certain regional motivations, these wars have been the US response to the opportunities and challenges opened by the demise of the USSR. Washington sees its military might as a trump card that can be employed to prevail over all its rivals in the coming struggle for resources.... For reasons both of world strategy and control over natural resources, the US is determined to secure for itself a dominant role in the former Soviet sphere.... The US House Committee on International Relations has begun holding hearings on the strategic importance of the Caspian region. At one meeting in February 1998, Doug Bereuter [said] Stated US policy goals regarding energy resources in this region,' he continued, 'include fostering the independence of the States and their ties to the West; breaking Russia's monopoly over oil and gas transport routes; promoting Western energy security through diversified suppliers; encouraging the construction of east-west pipelines that do not transit Iran; and denying Iran dangerous leverage over the Central Asian economies.'.... This is the significance of the present military action against Yugoslavia and the growth of militarism generally. Kosovo is a testing ground for wars that will follow in the former Soviet region.... The United States for its part gives the impression of a society on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Public life is punctuated by outbreaks of violence by schoolchildren that have left the country in a state of semi-shock. No explanation, beyond the most banal, has been offered by officials or experts for these explosions of violent anti-social behavior. In their own way, however, they testify to the brutality of contemporary American life and the suppressed antagonisms that lie just under the surface.... The country will continue to be remade as a high-tech garrison, where the bulk of public expenditure will be devoted towards military purposes abroad. Social programs will increasingly be replaced by naked domestic repression."
Why is NATO at war with Yugoslavia? World power, oil and gold
World Socialist Web Site, 24 May 1999

"General Wesley Clark, the former Nato commander and presidential hopeful, will testify next month at the war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic under conditions of strict censorship and confidentiality imposed by the United States. Washington is believed to be fearful of potentially damaging revelations about its Balkan realpolitik during the 1990s and in the Bosnian War. General Clark, who is seeking the Democratic Party nomination for President, will be one of the highest-profile witnesses to take the stand. The former Nato commander directed the alliance's 78-day bombing campaign in Kosovo in 1999, after Serbian forces had launched an onslaught against ethnic Albanian separatists. General Clark will testify on December 15 and 16. Public galleries will be closed and the broadcast system that transmits the proceedings on the internet and on closed-circuit television will be shut down. The conditions of General Clark's testimony include a 48-hour delay to enable the US Government to review the transcript and seek the court's consent to censor parts on the ground of national security. Two US representatives will attend the sessions. The three-judge panel hearing Mr Milosevic's case agreed to the conditions, which are unique, because they decided that they were justified by the potential importance of General Clark's testimony, Jim Landale, the tribunal spokesman, said. In his cross-examination of General Clark, Mr Milosevic could reveal sensitive information about the West's diplomatic and military strategy for dealing with the crisis in the Balkans."
General Clark to testify against Milosevic
London Times, 20 November 2003

"The final toll of civilians confirmed massacred by Yugoslav forces in Kosovo is likely to be under 3,000, far short of the numbers claimed by Nato governments during last year's controversial air strikes on Yugoslavia. When Yugoslav forces withdrew from Kosovo in June last year, Nato spokesmen estimated that the Serbs had killed at least 10,000 civilians. While the bombing was under way William Cohen, the US defence secretary, announced that 100,000 Kosovo Albanian men of military age were missing after being taken from columns of families being deported to Albania and Macedonia. 'They may have been murdered,' he said....The exhumation of less than 3,000 bodies is sure to add fuel to those who say Nato's intervention against Yugoslavia was not 'humanitarian' and that it had other motives ..."
Serb killings 'exaggerated' by west
Guardian, 18 August 2000

"President Clinton has authorised an all-out campaign to topple Slobodan Milosevic, according to sources close to the US Government. Earlier this spring, Mr Clinton signed a secret presidential 'finding' giving the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) the green light to try to bring down the Yugoslav president, said sources quoted in the US news-magazine Time. The reported campaign has two tracks, overt and covert....Now, six new radio transmitters outside Serbian territory will beam a 24-hour diet of pro-Western broadcasts to bolster dissident elements. "
'CIA ordered to topple Milosevic': US report
BBC Online, 6 July 1999

"The last time [before Iraq] American bombers were sent over the horizon to rain democracy on a reluctant constituency was in the spring of 1999, when the NATO alliance engaged the hearts and minds of the Serbian government. The regime to be changed was that of Slobodan Milosevic. For 78 days, NATO -- but mostly American bombers -- attacked military and civilian targets throughout Serbia and Montenegro.... The bombings killed almost as many Serbs as the number of Americans who later died in the World Trade Center.... During the week before Djindjic's March 12 assassination, I traveled extensively in the former Yugoslavia, now called the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro.... Djindjic had come to power courtesy of the oddest of bed fellows: the U.S. government and local gangsters, who flourished in the 1990s because American sanctions had put legitimate business to the wall. In the beginning, both the United States and the gangsters thought that their interests would best be served with a new government in Serbia, and both agreed to sacrifice Milosevic on the altar of war guilt in The Hague. But more recently, this coalition found itself with conflicting agendas. The gangsters thought that support for Djindjic would exempt them from a summons to the International Criminal Tribunal, but the U.S. made further aid to Serbia conditional on Serbia's serving up more suspects to that court."
Bombing down to Belgrade - An unholy alliance with Serb gangsters
US's Providence Journal, Rhode Island, 4 April 2003

"...there is evidence that underworld groups, controlled by Zoran Djindjic and linked to US intelligence, carried out a series of assassinations of key supporters of the Milosevic regime, including Defence Minister Pavle Bulatovic and Zika Petrovic, head of Yugoslav Airlines.... Despite the opposition of most of its citizens, [Djindjic] the 'heralder of democracy' followed the requirements of the 'international community' and after 74 years the name of Yugoslavia disappeared off the political map. The strategic goal of its replacement with a series of weak and divided protectorates had finally been achieved....The lesson from Serbia for today's serial regime changers is a simple one. You can try to subjugate a people by sanctions, subversion and bombs. You can, if you wish, overthrow governments you dislike and seek to impose your will by installing a Hamid Karzai, General Tommy Franks or a Zoran Djindjic to act as imperial consul. But do not imagine that you can then force a humiliated people to pay homage to them."
The quisling of Belgrade
The murdered Serbian prime minister was a reviled western stooge whose economic reforms brought misery
Guardian, 14 March 2003

"The political stakes are high and the financial risks many but the spoils are huge for investors seeking a way to pipe Russian and Caspian oil around the treacherous Turkish straits to the energy-hungry West. Oil producers lost at least $700 million last winter as bad weather and heavy seas kept their tankers stuck for as long as two weeks at the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits —- the only way for sea-bound crude to exit the Black Sea. Delayed for years by political wrangling and environmental fears, several billion-dollar pipeline projects are finally inching toward start dates, with countries and investors around the vast Black Sea vying for pole position. 'An exit-Black Sea pipeline is a necessity, because the oil market requires diversified supplies,' said Max Shein, chief equity strategist at Moscow-based Broker Credit Service..... 'One day the ships will carry the oil to us,' said Nikolov, whose company, the Albanian Macedonian Bulgarian Oil Corporation (AMBO), aims to link the Bulgarian Black Sea port of Bourgas with Vlore, on Albania’s Adriatic coast. The need is clear: already booming oil production in the Urals and the Caspian Sea regions is expected to double crude traffic through the Turkish straits through 2015. Russia has increased exports by 50 percent since 2001 to become the world’s second largest oil exporter behind Saudi Arabia, and Kazakhstan expects to more than double its output of 1.3 billion tonnes of crude in the next decade. AMBO hopes to build a 912-km (567-mile) pipeline from Bourgas through Macedonia to Vlore, a deep port accessible to huge tankers. Analysts warn the pipeline’s length and political risks in the region continue to hinder the plan, which originally surfaced in 1994, but Nikolov said a deal could be imminent. 'I expect the final political accord on the pipeline to be endorsed next year,' he said. 'No pipeline will ever lose money. But a pipeline is as much economics as it is politics.'.... Alongside the AMBO plan is a project to run a link between Romania’s Black Sea port of Constanta to Italy’s Trieste......"
Black Sea Pipelines Look to Bypass Straits
Reuters, 28 November 2005

"Five countries are expected to sign in January an agreement to build an oil pipeline from Romania to Italy. The project, which includes rehabilitating Romania's Black Sea port Constanta, would cost at least $2.4bn (€2bn, £1.4bn), a feasibility study has found. People close to the project said two key oil companies, one international energy group and one state-owned energy company, had expressed interest. Henry Owen, a financial adviser to the project, said the pipeline would feed refineries in south-eastern Europe, Italy, Austria and Bavaria and would send oil to tankers via an existing pipeline from Trieste to the deepwater port at Genoa. It would reduce European dependence on Middle Eastern oil, would be outside Russian control and would help to alleviate some of the congestion in the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits, analysts said. But they warned that the pipeline faced several competitors and that an agreement could still be scuttled by one of the five states. If the signing ceremony proceeds, the next big hurdle will be reaching agreement on the pipeline tariffs. Ian Woollen, senior analyst at Wood Mackenzie, the UK-based consultants, said: 'It is a step forward, but there is still a long way to go. There are a lot of competing options that make more sense logistically and commercially.' Two pipelines that would originate in Burgas, Bulgaria, compete with the so-called Pan-European Pipeline from Constanta to Trieste. One would send oil to Alexandroupolis in Greece, the other to Vlore on Albania's Adriatic coast. Politics plays as much of a role as money. Russia's interest in controlling the region's oil flow, and the US opposing objective in diversifying the power away from Moscow, mix with the broader tug between Asia and Europe, both large markets keen to receive the oil. Meanwhile, Turkey wants to reduce the strain of shipping almost all the region's oil through the dangerously busy Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits, but does not want to lose control of the power and the income that comes with being such an important trading gateway. Altogether a dozen pipelines are proposed for the region. The most significant new pipeline is the BP-led Baku to Ceyhan line, expected to open this spring."
Five countries to build joint oil pipeline
Financial Times, 20 December 2005

"The defence lawyers assigned to ex-Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic have asked for the former NATO commander General Wesley Clark to be recalled to the witness stand for further questioning.... In their latest submission, filed on February 10, defence lawyers Steven Kay and Gillian Higgins, whose assistance is imposed on Milosevic against his will, objected to the fact that questioning of Clark at the time was restricted to the contents of a statement he had given to prosecutors. By pressing for such restrictions, they argued, 'The prosecution and the [United States] government structured the appearance of General Clark in the trial in such a way that only issues in support of the prosecution’s case could be adduced.'... The US embassy in The Hague has since written to the court, reminding judges of Washington's desire to protect 'sensitive information and legitimate national interests' and seeking leave to file a lengthier written submission on the matter.'"
Milosevic Lawyers Seek Recall of General Clark
Instituted For War And Peace Reporting, 17 February 2006

"A deal to supply the EU with 10bn cubic metres of Turkmen gas per year from 2009 has been hailed by officials as 'an important step'.  The agreement will boost the EU-backed Nabucco pipeline - planned to reduce reliance on Russian gas, which accounts for a quarter of EU supplies. The Turkmen gas will only make up a small percentage of EU demands and it is not clear how it will reach Europe.  Nabucco is due to be built in 2010 and the first gas will flow in 2013."
EU secures Turkmenistan gas deal
BBC Online, 14 April 2008

"Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had reason to look pleased when he met Serbian President Boris Tadic in Moscow on Christmas Eve. The two leaders finalized an agreement for Gazprom, Russia's behemoth state gas monopoly, to buy a controlling interest in Serbia's state oil and gas industry — and a plan for Russia to construct a gas pipeline through the country. Former Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, whose government negotiated the deal, says it will end his country's crippling energy shortages by guaranteeing gas supplies and using Russian capital to rebuild Serbia's decaying infrastructure. 'We are in front of a very good solution,' he says. 'First of all, from the point of view of the interests of Serbia, for its independence, it is very important that the capitals of different countries are involved.' But critics say Gapzrom is exploiting Serbia's weak economy in its push to boost control over the European energy market. Many Serbians welcomed sacrificing control of their energy industry — for political reasons as much as economic ones. Both Russia and Serbia are Slavic countries that consider each other traditional allies. Moscow supported Belgrade during its bombing by NATO in 1999, memories of which are still raw here..... There's much more at stake than simply the Serbian energy market. Belgrade is part of a fierce struggle between Russia and the West over the future of energy supplies to Europe. A number of European companies had hoped to buy into Serbia's energy industry but withdrew because of the cost. But despite the recent economic turmoil, Gazprom found the money because it wants to make Serbia the European hub of its planned new South Stream pipeline from Russia. The project is meant to compete with a planned European Union pipeline from the Caspian Sea that would cut out Russia by delivering Central Asian gas through Georgia. The Georgians say energy was a major factor behind Russia's invasion of their country last year. The United States champions the European Union's Nabucco pipeline. U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza, who has led the effort, says Russia's plan is part of a strategy to win control over the European gas market."
Serbia Plays Key Role In Russian Gas Pipeline Plans
NPR, 7 January 2009

"If one were to ask Serbs about what they needed more - General Ratko Mladic, who was delivered to the international detention center of The Hague war crimes tribunal on Tuesday, or membership in the European Union (EU) - the majority would certainly vote for the latter. The economy and living conditions in Serbia are in such bad shape that EU membership is viewed as almost the only cure for all of its ills. This is partly true. Brussels has announced more than once that the EU would lift all obstacles to Serbia's entry after the extradition of General Ratko Mladic, the former commander of Bosnian Serb troops during the 1992-1995 war, to The Hague. So, it was made abundantly clear that Mladic was Serbia's ticket into the EU. On June 1, he was transferred to a cell in The Hague....While Mladic was in hiding, obvious attempts were being made to distance Serbia further away from Russia. In the early 2000s, the Americans spread rumors that he took refuge in Russia and was settled quite comfortably there. This is clear from the U.S. State Department cables that were released by WikiLeaks. The reasoning was simple - if Mladic, an international criminal, lives in Moscow, then Russia must be blocking Serbia's progress, its entry to the EU and accession to Western civilization. It was a shameless tactic, but it was effective. However, Serbia's alienation from Russia began even earlier - when Moscow did nothing serious to stop NATO bombings in 1999. The then Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov only made the empty gesture of ordering his plane to turn around mid-air as he was on his way to the United States. Now it is clear that the historical ties between Russia and Serbia have been severed and that Serbia has opted to join the EU. Slovenia is already in the EU. Croatia, Macedonia and Montenegro are official candidates. Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and now Serbia are potential candidates. It seems that the Balkan issue, which has tormented the world so much since the 19th century, will soon become a thing of the past. We'll still be friends with Serbia, but now on the basis of the South Stream project. But this will be an entirely different sort of relationship - one based on hydrocarbons rather than on Slavic friendship."
Ratko Mladic - the high price of EU integration for Serbia
RIA Novosti, 2 June 2011

"A U.S. army official in Romania says an American military base near the Black Sea port of Constanta will become a permanent facility in the spring and be jointly used with Romanian forces. Lt. Col. Daniel Herrigstad says the U.S. government invested $48 million to modernize the base. Herrigstad told the news agency Agerpres on Friday that the base would initially host up to 1,700 U.S. and Romanian soldiers."
US military base in Romania to become permanent
Associated Press, 23 October 2009

Serbia - Four Periods Of American Espionage

The Key To The Covert Western-Sought Break Up Of Moscow Allied Former Yugoslavia Was The Spread Of Civil War In Which The CIA Is Known To Have Secretly Participated
The Question Now Arises As To Whether The CIA May Also Have Had Its Own Highly Placed Agent Provocateur In Belgrade For This Purpose
Since The Embarrassment Of His Outing As A CIA Double-Agent Jovica Stanisic Has Been Described As Having Secretly Worked For Peace
However Whilst Milosevic's Government Was Found Not Guilty By The International Court of Justice Of Alleged Involvement In The Srebrenica Atrocities
Jovica Stanisic Still Faces Allegations Of Sending Scorpion Death Squads To Srebrenica

"President Milosevic's secret police chief and organiser of Serb death squads during the genocidal ethnic cleansing of disintegrating Yugoslavia was the United States' top CIA agent in Belgrade, according to the independent Belgrade Radio B92. The claim that from 1992 until the end of the decade, Jovica Stanisic, head of Serbia's murderous DB Secret Police, was regularly informing his CIA handlers of the thinking in Milosevic's inner circle has shocked the region. Stanisic is said to have loyally served his two masters for eight years. He is facing war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court at The Hague. In the terrifying years of Yugoslavia's internecine wars, he acted as the willing 'muscle' behind Milosevic's genocidal campaigns in Croatia, Kosovo and Bosnia, including Sebrenica.... Like in a Cold War spy thriller, Serbia's secret police chief met his CIA handlers in safe houses, parks and boats on the river Sava to betray his master's action plans. He provided, it is claimed, information on the whereabouts of Nato hostages, aided CIA operatives in their search for Muslim mass graves and helped the US set up secret bases in Bosnia to monitor the implementation of the 1995 Dayton peace accord....Thus the judges at The Hague are having to judge a man who allegedly sent the Scorpion death squads to Srebrenica to 'deal' with men and boys fleeing the UN-protected Muslim enclave, while working with the CIA trying to end Milosevic's ethnic wars."
Death squad leader ‘was top CIA agent’
Sunday Herald, 22 March 2009

Western Sponsorship Of The Opposition - How Milosevic Was Eventually Toppled

"[In order to topple Milosevic] Approximately $30 million, predominantly from America, were channeled into the country [Serbia] via an office in Budapest, in order to equip the opposition for the election campaign with computers, telephones and office materials. Hundreds of election helpers were trained abroad for these tasks."
Helping the Revolution
Der Spiegel, 9 October 2000

"Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro--Serbian television viewers were cheerfully amused during the Georgian crisis that led to President Eduard Shevardnadze's overthrow. Otpor! was founded in early 2000, and quickly spread from Belgrade to every corner of Serbia. The breaking-news footage from Tbilisi, beamed into their living-room TVs, showed symbols and political iconography they had grown deeply familiar with. The posters of a clenched fist, plastered everywhere, were identical to those used by Serbia's Otpor! (Resistance!) movement in 2000, during the campaign to oust Slobodan Milosevic. Even the slogans on billboards were familiar: 'Gotov je!' ('He's finished'), the Latin-script letters proclaimed--in Serbian. Clearly, young Georgian protesters didn't have time to translate the propaganda material they'd borrowed from their Serbian friends.... And yes: Otpor! militants have confirmed that they were consulted by Georgian opposition--and that they provided advice, material, and help. ... [in Serbia] The European Union, the United States, and many non-governmental organizations provided training in political marketing and resistance tactics, advice--and yes, money too.... The campaign was massive, the expenses high, and the funding was foreign--smuggled across the border and carefully concealed."
A Revolution Brought to You By
TDL, 1 December 2003

"Tony Blair’s top diplomat in Baghdad was ignored when he urged the Americans not to sack 25,000 Baathist officials, the Iraq inquiry was told yesterday. Sir John Sawers, Special Representative in Baghdad at the time, now the head of MI6, testified to the chaos he saw in post-invasion Iraq on arriving in the capital in early May 2003.... Sir John was asked whether the change of regime in Baghdad had come up in early discussions between Mr Blair and Mr Bush in 2001. He replied: 'I think there are lots of countries where we would like to see a change in regime but that doesn’t mean that one actively pursues policies in that direction.' When Mr Blair and Mr Bush had their first meeting — at Camp David in February 2001 — 'aggressive regime change [in Iraq] was never given serious consideration'. He said that the approach adopted with Saddam was based on methods that had led to the ousting of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia the previous year. Among the proposals considered was support for opposition groups..."
Iraq fell into chaos after US ignored Blair envoy’s advice not to sack all Baathists
London Times, 11 December 2009

"For 10 years Serbia had successfully resisted the war against Yugoslavia, which began in the early 1990s. After NATO’s war of aggression against our country ended in 1999 without a clear victory, London and Washington carried out a vast special operation to overthrow Milosevic; it was the mother of all subsequent 'color revolutions.' Through a presidential decree, Bill Clinton gave the CIA carte blanche to carry out a coup in Yugoslavia. Enormous sums were invested in political parties, NGOs [non-governmental organizations] and media. The fragmented opposition [to Milosevic and the Socialist Party of Serbia] was unified under foreign guidance. A coalition of 18 parties under the umbrella called the 'Democratic opposition,' or DOS, formed with one goal: overthrow Milosevic. William Montgomery, the person later named as U.S. ambassador to Belgrade, set up a specially equipped office in Budapest [in neighboring Hungary]. Opposition activists attended courses that were run by CIA agents. The so-called student group known as 'Otpor' (Resistance) used the slogan 'Gotov je' (He is finished) to conduct the election — this was all a project of Western intelligence agencies. In the Yugoslav presidential election on Sept. 24 the incumbent Milosevic obtained 15 percent fewer votes than Western-backed candidate Vojislav Kostunica. However, since neither of these two leading candidates won an absolute majority, it should have come to a run-off ballot. The DOS parties claimed that Milosevic had falsified the elections and Kostunica was victorious in the first round of voting. Otpor led violent street protests. DOS wanted to prevent the runoff, although they would have won for sure. Milosevic refused to accept a resignation without a second round of voting. At the height of the dispute, the Supreme Court issued a strange decision: Because of rumors of irregularities in the first ballot, all votes from the southern Serbian province of Kosovo were simply canceled. Of course, the vote in those districts would have to be repeated. With Kosovo’s votes cancelled, Kostunica’s vote share increased to more than 50 percent. Milosevic acknowledged the decision and on Oct. 5 congratulated Kostunica’s victory. This step, which had barely been reported, was buried in what was a media-constructed 'popular uprising.' As Otpor set the Parliament on fire, the Kostunica forces immediately and completely seized the government apparatus. With this coup they avoided a controlled handover of power. The years-long image of Milosevic as a 'dictator' in the Western media would have appeared absurd if he were simply removed by a Democratic vote. The West didn’t want to risk this loss of credibility. Mainly though, the 'revolution' needed to be carried out violently to shorten the time until the new regime could allow far-reaching Western interventions in the state and economy, thus making the transformation irreversible.... But beyond the Western propaganda, there was in reality a great discontent among the population [in 2000]. ... Under the guidance of and in close collaboration with their foreign sponsors, the opposition understood how to blame on Milosevic the suffering caused by Western sanctions and NATO’s war and how to make big promises should they win the elections. The bombs had destroyed the economy and infrastructure, which aggravated the social discontent. When the government used up the remaining government funds for repairing the main road and rail links, the voters felt even more pain and were susceptible to opposition propaganda that claimed voting out Milosevic would stop the foreign pressure and increase the standard of living. It is in this sense that one should understand White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer’s comments that the war was part of the 'regime change' strategy of NATO and the United States, because it weakened Milosevic and led to his fall. Since the early 1990s there have been not many different wars in Yugoslavia — in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo — it was all one war: that of the West against Yugoslavia. In this statement I fully agree with Milosevic. Former U.S. President George Bush Sr., while speaking during the celebration of German reunification, discussed the elimination of the consequences of the Versailles Treaty in Europe. A key point regarding Versailles at the beginning of the 20th century was to weaken Germany in favor of the Eastern European countries, which Germany had considered as satellites within the 'Central Europe' doctrine. Thus, those in Versailles for the first time recognized Yugoslavia as a state. Until Yugoslavia’s breakup, Catholic and Muslim groups in Yugoslavia were used by Western powers to counteract Russian influence, which was based on historical closeness with Serbs. In the 1990s, however, a resurgent Germany’s role was to serve as a NATO member to weaken Russia and Eastern Europe, which was to be transformed into a 'Euro-Atlantic region' — but of course only as a colony. In line with the long-cherished desire of the British, Serbia especially should be weakened as a potential ally of Russia. With Milosevic it could never happen. Kosovo is now home to Camp Bondsteel, the largest U.S. military base in Europe, in the area of the proposed major oil and gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea."
Former Milosevic Aide Vladimir Krsljanin
Interview with Krsljanin: ‘Serbia is an occupied country’
Junge Welt, (Germany) 6 October 2010

"The book [I have written - 'Struggling with Democratic Transition: After the cheering stops'] deals with the period after I left the embassy in Croatia in 2001 and left for Budapest where I opened up the Yugoslav affairs office, then when I came to Belgrade after Miloševic’s fall. Therefore, it is about the period from 2000 until 2004 and those are my personal experiences from that time, but I was focusing on what we from the embassy did......[A] chapter of the book is dedicated to the time in Budapest and the office I opened there. It was supposed to be the U.S. embassy for Serbia in-exile, the reason for placing the office in Budapest was for the most part because people from Serbia could simply travel to Hungary, without visas. The book describes in detail the ways in which we were helping the democratic alternative to Miloševic’s regime win.... [Our goal was] To bring down Slobodan Miloševic’s regime. When I arrived in Budapest, which was in June of 2000, I had to find a place for my new office, employees. We wanted to be completely separate from the U.S. embassy in Budapest, we assumed we were going to be there at least three years. Everything changed when Miloševic decided to call early elections. At that point, we realized that it was an opportunity we could miss and that we needed to help the democratic opposition in Serbia in every way to defeat Miloševic.... [RTS (Serbian state broadcaster) aired a documentary in October 2010 called The Final Clash, about the events on October 5, 2000. In that documentary Montgomery said that he helped bring in more than USD 100mn into Serbia in order to topple Miloševic] I don’t want to comment on the amount of money. I actually don’t know how much money was really spent. I can only say that the U.S. thought that Miloševic had to fall, that he was a big source of instability in the entire region. One of the ways to achieve that was to develop the civil society, especially independent media and associations such as GONG. A democratic alternative to Miloševic’s regime needed to be strengthened by all means. For example, we gave special cell phones to key political leaders of the opposition which were working during the protests independently from the Serbian telecommunications network.... During the 1990's the U.S. was involved in many international events in which we had a key role and which we considered great successes. At the end of each event we had a scene that could have been a typical American movie happy ending – for example, crowds of citizens in front of the Serbian parliament and Miloševic's fall. In reality, it was not the end of the movie but only the end of a chapter in the history of a region or a country, and a beginning of a new chapter, full of new challenges and perhaps even more difficult."
Former U.S. Ambassador to Croatia and Serbia William Montgomery
Ex-U.S. ambassador talks Miloševic fall
B92 (Serbia), 29 October 2010

'Great Powers Meddling'

"A UN court ruled Kosovo's claim of independence as legal, intensifying a global debate about sovereignty and self-determination. But the conflict in Georgia reveals great powers - not courts - decide the fate of nations....During the Kosovo conflict, Russia viewed itself as the historic guardian of Serbian interests against an expansionist West. However, once NATO mobilized militarily against Belgrade, there was very little Russia could do to stop a Western-backed secession of Kosovo from Serbia. Moscow felt sidelined and not taken seriously as a great power. So after Kosovo declared its independence in 2008, Russia adopted the case as a precedent. And it applied this precedent in Georgia under the pretence of maintaining stability in the South Caucasus, as the West had done in Kosovo nearly 10 years prior. 'From the Russian perspective they will tell you that their position was not contradictory,' Alexandros Petersen, an expert on Eurasian politics at the Atlantic Council, told Deutsche Welle. 'They were initially saying Kosovo should not be independent. They were also initially saying Abkhazia should not be independent either. Their position after the break up of USSR supported Georgian sovereignty up until the conflict in 2008. They will tell you their position only changed when the position of the West on Kosovo changed.' While the Russians try to equate their role in the Caucasus with the Western role in the Balkans, Petersen draws a distinction between the positions of the two powers....'The broader lesson is that we have not gotten past the great powers meddling, the great powers carving up borders in the sense that we thought we had,' Petersen said. 'What it underscores in both cases is that it's larger powers with geopolitical interests that determine the outcome of these states.'"
Great powers playing politics with Kosovo and Georgia
Deutsche Welle, 10 September 2010

"Former Croatian General Ante Gotovina stands accused of war crimes in connection with a 1995 military offensive. Some 150 civilians were killed in the advance. Now, it looks like he may have had help from the United States. His trial may not get started before the end of 2006 or the spring of 2007, but already the case against former Croatian general Ante Gotovina promises some surprises. Gotovina, who is accused of being responsible for the murder of at least 150 Serbian civilians and the eviction of some 150,000 Serbs from the Krajina region in August 1995, may have had some American help. Croatian military sources told SPIEGEL that Gotovina had direct though secret support from both the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency in planning and carrying out the 'Storm' offensive, which was designed to retake the Krajina region from the Serbs. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) behind chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte has charged Gotovina and the late Croatian leader Franco Tudjman with committing a 'joint criminal undertaking' with the goal of ethnically cleansing the Serbs from Croatia. In preparing for the offensive, Croatian soldiers were allegedly trained at Fort Irwin in California and the Pentagon purportedly aided in planning the operation. Additional training assistance is said to have come from the American firm Military Professional Resources Incorporated. Immediately prior to the offensive, then-Deputy CIA Director George Tenet allegedly met with Gotovina and Tudjman's son -- then in charge of Croatian intelligence -- for last minute consultations. During the operation, a US aircraft is said to have destroyed Serbian communication and anti-aircraft centers and the Pentagon allegedly passed on information gathered by satellite to Gotovina. Earlier this month, the Zagreb weekly Globus, claiming sources within Gotovina's defense team, alleged that then US President Bill Clinton knew all about the planned offensive. Clinton, the paper alleged, was angry at the Serbs for having overrun the UN protected Bosnian 'safe area' of Srebrenica the previous month and wanted them punished. Gotovina was arrested in early December after having been in hiding for years. The European Union had made his arrest a precondition to resuming accession negotiations with Croatia. Gotovina has pled not guilty to the war crimes charges levied by the Hague tribunal. News reports have indicated that Gotovina's lawyers may be planning to rest his defense on the American participation in the offensive. A recent addition to the Gotovina defense team, though, may alter that strategy. At the insistence of the Pentagon, the American lawyer Greg Kehoe will help defend Gotovina at his trial. If convicted, the former general who many in Croatia still consider a hero could face life in prison."
US Links to Croatian War Crime?
Der Spiegel, 23 January 2006

"The trial could prove embarrassing for Western intelligence services and regional governments if General Gotovina reveals how much support the Croatian military and intelligence services received from the West, especially the United States and the CIA. According to Hrvoje Sarinic, former chief of staff to President Tudjman, who also acted as his secret envoy to Milosevic, the CIA cooperated with General Gotovina and supplied intelligence-gathering equipment before Operation Storm."
Croat general Ante Gotovina stands trial for war crimes
London Times, 11 March 2008

"A Croatian general went into the dock at the war crimes tribunal for Yugoslavia in The Hague yesterday in a keenly awaited case that is effectively putting the Zagreb regime of the 1990s on trial for crimes against humanity in its war against the Serbs.In what is arguably the most important trial staged at the tribunal since Slobodan Milosevic died in custody in The Hague two years ago, General Ante Gotovina faces nine counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. More than six years after Gotovina was secretly indicted, and four years after he went on the run from international justice, the trial of the 52-year-old former French legionnaire will open a window on the murky and ugly politics of the Balkans in the 1990s, as well as on the roles of the CIA, MI6, and the Pentagon....For the Croats the 72-hour blitz, named Operation Storm, was well-planned military brilliance that routed the Serb forces. Gotovina was a key commander of the operation that led to the Croatian victory. The US was closely involved in it; the CIA used spy planes to expose Serbian plans."
Croat general on trial for war crimes
Guardian, 12 March 2008

What Did The CIA's George Tenet
Know About The US Covert Operations In Yugoslavia? - Click Here

CIA Uses Belgian Arms Dealer To Supply Iranian Weapons To
Anti-Serb Forces In Croatia

"U.S. authorities say Jacques Monsieur, a swashbuckling 56-year-old known as 'the Fox' and 'the Field Marshal,' conspired with an undercover agent to buy engines and parts for F-5 fighter planes for Iran. Monsieur faces a six-count federal indictment, unsealed Wednesday, that includes charges of money laundering, smuggling and violating laws against exporting arms to Iran....In the last two years, U.S. investigators have gone after elusive kingpins of the arms trade who allegedly benefited for years from the protection of spy agencies. He has not yet been arraigned. Investigators arrested Monsieur last week while he was in New York on his way to France, where he lives, officials said. He becomes the latest in a string of high-rollers to fall victim to global undercover arms-trafficking operations by U.S. agents.... Monsieur, a suave veteran of Belgian military intelligence who breeds horses on a French estate, spent two decades doing business in war zones from the Balkans to Africa. His specialties are said to be light to medium arms and military aviation parts. He has run afoul of the law in Belgium, France and Iran, according to news reports. Many arms traffickers cultivate relationships with spy agencies, exchanging information for protection. In a rare interview with Radio France International in 2004, Monsieur insisted that his career was a cover for longtime work for Western intelligence services. He claimed in the interview that he had CIA approval when he ran guns to Croatia during the 1990s conflicts in the Balkans. He figured into a French scandal in which top officials were accused of arming African factions in deals involving kickbacks and oil. Since the 1980s, when his name came up in the Iran-Contra affair, he has specialized in supplying Iran, according to Alain Lallemand, a Belgian journalist who wrote an extensive report on Monsieur in 2002 for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a branch of the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity....U.S. officials would not comment on Monsieur's past, including his alleged ties to the CIA or role in the Iran-Contra scandal."
Belgian arms trader jailed in Alabama
Los Angeles Times, 4 September 2009

"It has been reported in the Iranian capital, Tehran, that a Belgian citizen arrested on spying charges is a well known international arms dealer. .... informed sources have now confirmed press reports circulating in France and Belgium that the arrested man is a well known Belgian arms dealer, Jacques Monsieur.... Mr Monsieur was apparently no stranger to Iran - he is reported to have played a big role in exporting Iranian arms to Bosnia in the early 1990s as well as to other countries in Africa and elsewhere."
Belgian arms dealer held in Iran
BBC Online, 24 January 2001

"A certain company from Bratislava, Joy Slovakia, was Cappiau's main long-time connection, and it also served as a cover for a Belgian arms dealer, Jacques Monsieur. Monsieur, who is claimed by foreign news media to having smuggled over 650 tons of various weapons at the height of the war in the former Yugoslavia, on his part had numerous contacts with the Belgian, French, American and Israeli intelligence services, and his name was linked to many illegal arms deals with Iran, Congo-Brazzaville and Croatia."
Links between Organized Crime and Croatia's Top Brass
AIM, 16 April 2001

"48 years old, this former officer of the Belgian army [Jacques Monsieur] was of all the wars and all the traffics of weapons of these twenty last years. Before [his] arrest in Iran in November 2000, [he] was the subject of a judicial enquiry on behalf of French justice for deliveries of weapons in Croatia between 1991 and 1995 after the bursting of Yugoslavia. But to the French judge who questioned [him], [he] answered that [he] had the support of the French secret service in this business.... after the end of the war Iran-Iraq (1988) and the bursting of the USSR and Yugoslavia, [he] started to deliver weapons, in particular Iranian, with the Croats and later with the Bosnians. In 1991, the United Nations issued an embargo on the sales of weapons to the belligerents of ex-Yugoslavia. 'I was contacted in Brussels by an agent of the CIA to organize this operation and to deliver weapons to the anti-Serb forces', [he] declared."
[Google Translation From Original French]
Jacques Monsieur condemned in Iran
RFI Actualite, [Date not indicated - Dec 2001?]

"After 18 months spent behind the bars of an Iranian prison, the merchant of weapons Jacques Mister left Teheran. Destination: Brussels.... In Brussels, Jacques Mister was already judged with the last autumn for related facts with his activity. A judgment by default (imprisoned in Teheran, [he] could not answer the convocation of the court) which opens the way with a new lawsuit, in front of the same jurisdiction..... This man impassioned by the horses Lusitanians could then tell the lower parts and the springs of the traffic of weapons. … How [he] settled in France, in 1992, to organize the deliveries of Iranian weapons to the Bosnian soldiers and Croatian during the conflict of Balkans… "
[Google Translation From Original French]
Jacques  Monsieur judged soon in Europe
RFI Actualite, 18 May 2002

"Believed to be among the biggest arms traffickers in Europe, [Jacques] Monsieur had violated a United Nations embargo by shipping arms to Bosnia and Croatia during the long bloody conflict in those countries, with the approval, he later claimed, of both the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the Direction de Surveillance de Territoire (DST), the French domestic intelligence service.... In September 2000, Monsieur told a French judge of having been contacted in 1991 in Brussels by the CIA, and, with the blessing of the French DST, of having sent tens of millions of dollars of weapons to Croatia. From 1991 to 1995, he found his best markets in Croatia and Bosnia, even though the two countries were under a United Nations embargo..... Another French magistrate, who is well versed in the Croatian trafficking case, said it was a political operation. 'A decision from on high led, in 1995, to the cancellation of a fourth wave of weapons deliveries to former Yugoslavia,' implying that French authorities had tacitly approved the prior three 'waves' of weapons shipments."
The Field Marshal
The Centre For Public Integrity, 15 November 2002

"Belgian arms trafficker Jacques Monsieur appeared in a Brussels court on 12 November, Brussels' 'Le Soir' reported two days later. A long-time supplier of Iran's who held an Iranian diplomatic passport, he was arrested in Tehran in November 2000 (see 'RFE/RL Iran Report,' 27 September 1999 and 14 May 2001). The hearing in Brussels confirmed Tehran's provision to Croatia and Bosnia of artillery shells, white phosphorous, and other military goods via Monsieur..."
Belgian Arms Trial Reveals Iranian Connection
RFE/RL Newsline, 15 November 2002

"I had relationships to certain American [intelligence] services. But I prefer not to specify it..... The mandate of the soldiers of UNO and NATO sent was very restrictive. They had just a mandate of observation, even not a mandate of response. Therefore, it was decided to help them. [I] was thus organized an appointment with president Tudjman, whom I did not know. We made a review of the military situation, equipment of which laid out the adversary, the Serb ones, and of all the lacks of the new Croatian army. Afterwards, I submitted my reports/ratios, I transmitted to the appropriate authority and then one studied what one could do. I organized a series of military deliveries of materials, in Croatia initially, then in Bosnia. There was of all: equipment, ammunition, armament..... In Croatia, the supplies were done mainly by sea, therefore it was consequent, yes. For Bosnia, the deliveries were done by air.... First, at the time where the war burst only in Croatia, UNO had issued a naval blockade in all the Adriatic Sea. Thus it was practically impossible to have access to a Croatian or Yugoslav port without passing by this blockade with all that that implied: controls at sea Adriatic, monitoring in the Yugoslav ports… Therefore, indeed, without a certain 'green light' it was impossible to convey these materials over there on the spot."
[Google Translation From Original French]
Confessions of a merchant of weapons (Interview with Jacques Monsieur)
RFI Actualite, 6 December 2004

"In the Eighties, Jacques Monsieur affirms to have accomplished many voyages in the Eastern European countries.... At the time of the conflict in ex-Yugoslavia, 1992 to 1995, [he] is again that which implements the double game of the policy of the Western allies, while equipping with the belligerents normally subjected to an embargo of UNO.... [His] Team [includes] Jean-Bernard Lasnaud: correspondent of Jacques Monsieur installed close to Miami in Florida. This French, very known on the market of the armament, seems to profit from a direct protection of the CIA.... James Marty Cappiau: former Belgian parachutist, reconverted into private safety, after having been useful in the rows of the Croatian army."
[Google Translation From Original French]
The device of Jacques Mister
RFI Actualite, 6 December 2004

"At 51 years, Jacques Monsieur leaves his silence and speaks about his activity about merchant about weapons. French justice with [his]cases, the man lives in Belgium where it benefits from a bail. For [his] defense [he] ensures that the traffic of weapons was only one cover for activities of espionage to the profit of Western services of information [i.e. western intelligence] ..... Refined and polyglot, the agent Monsieur would have initially worked for the SGR, the military secret service Belgian, while being supervised by the American services on which [he] refuses to be more precise. The nature even of the operations of which [he] participle lets think that the CIA is not foreign with [his] activities. In particular at the time of Irangate (supply of weapons in Iran by the Americans in full Iran-Iraq war and whereas Washington and Teheran are with drawn knives). In this context, the pecuniary motivation of the services is not to exclude, because the values of the tenders concerned are colossal. Certain services of information could engage these operations to finance their own clandestine activities or to weaken the enemy....Beyond the principles, the way in which the intermediary circumvents the embargoes or the devices legal into force shows that such an activity cannot be considered without the active complicity of the military authorities. The supply of weapons and ammunition in Croatia and Bosnia is the example more completed. Whereas UNO and the forces of NATO impose a naval blockade Adriatique at sea, several cargo liners deliver their goods directly in Croatian ports. For Bosnia, the deliveries are carried out by Iliouchine cargo aircrafts being posed on airports theoretically controlled by the blue helmets! Consequently, difficult not to give a certain credit to the assumption of the 'amber light' (semi-official agreement) granted by the secret service."
[Google Translation From Original French]
Jacques Monsieur says 'the Fox': merchant of weapons and spy?
RFI Actualite, 6 December 2004

"A retired U.S. Air Force colonel charged in the 1980s in an Iran-Contra related weapons smuggling case has been indicted in a U.S. federal court in Miami with conspiring with an Israeli aeronautics engineer to illegally export 2,000 AK-47s to Somalia [from Bosnia].... O’Toole , then described as a Santa Ana-based aviation consultant, was charged in 1989 with conspiring with a controversial Israeli self-described former Mossad agent, Ari Ben-Menashe, and a Connecticut resident Richard St. Francis, with trying to sell three U.S. C-130 air cargo planes to Iran. But the charges against O’Toole were dropped in 1991 during the first Gulf War. Beginning in April, according to the indictment, Miller and O’Toole conspired to obtain and transport hundreds of AK-47s from Bosnia to the northern Somalian city of Banderal, using false end user certificates of Chad, in violation of U.S. arms export control laws. Somalia is under a U.N. arms embargo. But the transport services source they contacted turned out to be an informant for the U.S. Customs and Immigrations Enforcement (ICE) agency, the indictment describes. 'On April 15, 2010, O’Toole sent an email to an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement confidential informant (hereafter CI) and asked if CI had Antonov 12 or similar line [aircraft] available for two charter flights from Bosnia to Africa to lift 12 tons on each flight for two round trips, landing in Africa 'to unload mil equipments' and return to Bosnia for a second trip,' the indictment reads. 'On April 21, 2010, O’Toole sent an email to the CI and advised the CI that the cargo would be Boxed AK-47s, 6 to 7.6 tons, and that the CI could choose to use AN26 or AN12 aircraft from Tuzla Bosnia to Banderal, Northern Somalia and that payment would be made by wire transfer or cash before departure.' 'On April 21, 2010, O’Toole sent an email to the CI and advised that he has enough cargo for 100 flights if the first flight is successful.'”
Iran-Contra colonel in gun-run case
Politico, 28 June 2010

"In view of the US covert support to the Croats it will be interesting to see if the International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague will seriously investigate this matter."
Srebrenica - A Safe Area?
Report Published on Behalf of The Dutch Government, 10 April 2002

"British and American special forces teams are working undercover in Kosovo with the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army to identify Serbian targets for Nato bombing raids.....It is the latest evidence of the growing co-operation between Nato and the KLA, a movement once denounced by the West's leaders as 'terrorists'...... The alliance is now quietly drafting the KLA into its war against Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader. It is even considering plans to train them and ease the arms embargo on Yugoslavia to supply them with weapons such as mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.... They are negotiating for a long-term training deal with Military and Professional Resources International, a mercenary company run by former American officers who operate with semi-official approval from the Pentagon and played a key role in building up Croatia's armed forces..."
SAS teams move in to help KLA 'rise from the ashes'
Sunday Telegraph, 18 April 1999

"The US government’s favourite private security service has trained both sides in the latest ethnic flare-up in the Balkans. Only two years ago the rag-tag Kosovar Albanian rebels were taken in hand by the Virginia-based company of professional soldiers, Military Professional Resources Incorporated. An outfit of former US marines, helicopter pilots and special forces teams, MPRI’s missions for the US government have run from flying Colombian helicopter gunships to supplying weapons to the Croatian army...."
Private US firm training both sides in Balkans
The Scotsman, March 02, 2001

"Ceku officially remained in the Croatian army, in which he has been decorated, until the beginning of this year. As an ethnic Albanian, he has long had links to the KLA, however. Last month he was appointed head of the Kosovo Protection Corps (TMK), a lightly armed civilian force of 5,000 members created from the KLA, with the blessing of the Lieutenant-General Sir Mike Jackson.... Sources familiar with the investigation into Ceku said the most serious crimes with which he had been linked were committed in the so-called Medak pocket of Krajina in 1993..... American diplomats, who have been the most supportive of the creation of the TMK, have suggested any indictment of Ceku would most likely be 'sealed' and thereby kept out of the public domain.... Another diplomat said he believed Kfor, the Nato-led peacekeeping force, could not contemplate a public relations disaster with the Albanians by arresting Ceku."
Kosovo defence chief accused of war crimes
Sunday Times, 10 October 1999

"... Now we have the full story of the secret alliance between the Pentagon and radical Islamist groups from the Middle East designed to assist the Bosnian Muslims... in flagrant violation of the UN security council arms embargo against all combatants in the former Yugoslavia. The result was a vast secret conduit of weapons smuggling though Croatia. This was arranged by the clandestine agencies of the US, Turkey and Iran, together with a range of radical Islamist groups, including Afghan mojahedin and the pro-Iranian Hizbullah...."
America used Islamists to arm the Bosnian Muslims
Guardian, 22 April 2002

"Ceku is the former Military Chief of Staff of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and the man handpicked by the US to head the KPC [Kosovo Protection Corps] .... Ceku [is] one of the top 'ethnic cleansers' in the Balkans, alongside Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. Ceku refined his brutality as a general in the US-backed Croatian Army during the Balkan war and was trained by Military Professional Resources Inc., a private paramilitary firm founded in 1987 and based in Alexandria, Virginia with former high-ranking US generals and NATO officials on its board. These officers include the former Commanders in Chief of the US Army in Europe and US Central Command, the Supreme Allied Commander-Atlantic and the former US Representative to the NATO Military Committee. In 1994, armed with a contract authorized by the Clinton Administration, MPRI officially began to train Croatian forces. Just months after MPRI arrived on the scene, Croatian forces carried out the notorious Operation Storm. In a brutal four-day blitzkrieg in 1995, these forces expelled some 200,000 Serbs from the Krajina region of Croatia after their villages were mercilessly shelled. Jane's Defense Weekly reported that Ceku was 'one of the key planners' of the operation that the New York Times called 'the largest single 'ethnic cleansing' of the war'..."
Washington's Men In Kosovo
Common Dreams, 19 July 2000

"When the Croatian military, in a highly effective offensive called Operation Storm, captured the Serb-held Krajina enclave later that year, there were suspicions that MPRI instructors must have been directly involved. The operation played a key role in reversing the tide of war against the Serbs and, consistent with American policy, in bringing both sides to the negotiating table. But the same Croatian military was subsequently implicated in uprooting more than 150,000 Serbs from their homes.... critics charge that the help MPRI provided the Croatians may have allowed the U. S. to secretly influence events in the war while maintaining its neutral posture and without sending U. S. troops, advisors or trainers. 'MPRI had all these different meetings with top Croatian defense officials right before the offensive. It's inconceivable that they did not have some kind of impact,' said one military analyst who has followed the company's involvement in the Balkans. 'It was followed by massive ethnic cleansing. Now, had American troops been on the ground, we would have been held accountable for that. The fact that it was a private company made the connection a lot less clear.'..."
U.S. Companies Hired to Train Foreign Armies
Los Angeles Times, 14 April 2002

"The clandestine arms supplies were therefore of greater importance to the Croats and the Bosnian Muslims. The training and the supplying of arms, for example, simplified the Croatian operations in the Krajina in mid 1995. Alongside secret arms supplies, the company MPRI provided training.... By engaging this company, Washington at the same time also reduced the danger of 'direct' involvement. The operation resulted in the killing of more than 500 civilians and the exodus of more than 150.000 ethic Serbs from the Krajina. In view of the US covert support to the Croats it will be interesting to see if the International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague will seriously investigate this matter."
Srebrenica - A Safe Area?
Appendix II - Intelligence and the war in Bosnia 1992 – 1995: The role of the intelligence and security services
Chapter 4, Secret arms supplies and other covert actions
Report Published on Behalf of The Dutch Government, 10 April 2002

"In 1995, Gen.Ceku was a player in Operation Storm, a covert Clinton-backed and MPRI-trained Croatian military operation that ethnically cleansed 200,000 Serbs from their homes in Croatia, killing thousands of civilians. Since taking over the KLA, Ceku has purged all of its moderates."
Defang the KLA
WorldNetDaily, 11 June 1999

"United Nations sources have already revealed that Agim Ceku, the guerrillas' former commander, may be the subject of a secret 'sealed' indictment for his activities while fighting for the Croatian army against the Serbs.... The investigation could radically alter the international perception of the conflict, in which Albanians were seen as the largely innocent victims of Serbian aggression. After a year of growing concern about hundreds of revenge killings of Serbs by Albanians in the province, there are signs that the public relations pendulum may begin to swing the Serbs' way. The investigations by the International War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia are among its most secretive, with officials fearing retaliation by the Albanians. 'The operations of the KLA clearly involved many activities we should scrutinise,' said one Hague official."
KLA faces trials for war crimes on Serbs
Sunday Times, 3 September 2000

"Americans in military uniform, operating from a cream-colored trailer near the runway, directed the GNAT-750 drone to photograph Serb troop positions and weapons emplacements. The images were transmitted back to base, analyzed and then passed on to the Pentagon. According to top Croat intelligence officials, copies were also sent to the headquarters of the Croatian general in command of 'Operation Storm.'... Now the successful CIA operation is about to become defense exhibit A in a war-crimes case at The Hague tribunal. Last month prosecutors announced the indictment of General Gotovina for atrocities committed during and after Operation Storm, including the murder of 150 Krajina Serbs, the forced displacement of as many as 200,000 others and the torching of thousands of homes.... Now a NEWSWEEK investigation has shown that U.S. intelligence cooperation with Croatia went far deeper than Washington has ever acknowledged. According to Miro Tudjman, son of the late president Franjo Tudjman and head of the Croatian counterpart to the CIA in the mid-1990s, the United States provided encryption gear to each of Croatia's regular Army brigades. He says the CIA also spent at least $10 million on Croatian listening posts to intercept telephone calls in Bosnia and Serbia. 'All our [electronic] intelligence in Croatia went online in real time to the National Security Agency in Washington,' says Tudjman. 'We had a de facto partnership.' American officials familiar with intelligence issues confirm that the CIA operated drones from a base near Zadar on the Adriatic coast, during and after Operation Storm... And the country's former intelligence chiefs have decided to speak out about their ties to the United States as a way of vouching for Gotovina's innocence. 'I always said that the only people in Croatia who know everything are the Americans,' says Markica Rebic, the former head of military intelligence. When Gotovina stands trial, some of those Americans may be asked to testify about their country's role in an ugly conflict."
What Did the CIA Know?
NEWSWEEK, 21 August 2001

"The Croatian World Congress sent a letter last week demanding that Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), open a criminal investigation into Mr. Clinton and other top officials of his administration [including current Director of the CIA George Tenet] for 'aiding and abetting indicted Croatian Gen. Ante Gotovina in a 1995 Croatian military operation known as ´Operation Storm.´... Secretly supported by the Clinton administration, Croatian forces launched a massive three-day military offensive - known as 'Operation Storm' - on Aug. 4, 1995, in which Croatia recovered territories occupied by rebel Serbs following Zagreb´s drive for independence from Yugoslavia in 1991.... The Croatian World Congress said the U.S. administration gave the green light for the operation and provided diplomatic and political support for it."
Balkans tribunal turns to Clinton
Washington Times, 8 July 2002

"Croatia said yesterday that it had frozen the assets of General Ante Gotovina, No 3 on the most-wanted list of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. His case threatens to derail the country’s attempt to join the EU. The move apparently came in response to widespread anger over the repeated and deliberate sabotaging by Croatian officials of efforts by Western intelligence services to find General Gotovina. Information has been leaked from the Croatian Government, helping the general to remain at large.... General Gotovina, 49, commanded Operation Storm in August 1995, when Croatian forces, newly armed and trained by American advisers and private military contractors, recaptured almost all of Serb-occupied territory in three days. Tens of thousands of civilians fled their homes, at least 150 were killed and hundreds more disappeared, while Croatian forces plundered and looted at will. The Croatians say that the West’s tough stand smacks of hypocrisy. Operation Storm had the support of the United States and Europe."
Croatia acts against fugitive 'hero'
London Times, 15 March 2005

What Did The CIA's George Tenet
Know About The US Covert Operations In Yugoslavia? - Click Here

"The complaint filed today [by the Croatian World Congress] alleges that the US officials aided Gen. Gotovina and the Croatian Army ('HV') in Operation Storm by violating a UN arms embargo and allowing Croatia to obtain weapons...US officials established a CIA base inside of Gen. Gotovina's military base which provided the US officials with real-time video footage of events transpiring on the ground during Operation Storm (and thus imputing to them knowledge of events on the ground), but also from which they could provide such intelligence data to General Gotovina to assist him in conducting Operation Storm.  If General Gotovina carried out a pre-planned campaign to deport 150,000 to 200,000 Croatian Serb civilians, then the CIA base was not only used to provide knowledge to US officials of such a plan and course of conduct on the part of General Gotovina, but was also used to assist General Gotovina in achieving the goals of his alleged plan.  The US officials gave the green light for the Operation and provided diplomatic and political support for it.  The US officials at all times had the ability to halt the military operation.  Accordingly, the US officials named in the complaint should be indicted for having aided and abetted General Gotovina."
CROATIAN WORLD CONGRESS FILES COMPLAINT WITH HAGUE PROSECUTOR DEL PONTE TO INVESTIGATE US OFFICIALS, INCLUDING WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON
Croatian World Congress, Press Release, 4 July 2002

"The battle in question--Operation Storm--was vetted and approved by US leaders up to Clinton himself, according to a complaint submitted by the Croatian World Congress to Carla del Ponte, the tribunal's chief prosecutor. US forces even provided secret military aid, charged the CWC. Thus 'evenhanded justice' requires that Clinton stand in the dock shoulder to shoulder with Gotovina, said the group's complaint. It's unlikely that UN security troops will be marching a handcuffed ex-President out of his Harlem offices any time soon. The Hague prosecutor's office simply filed the complaint without comment."
Disorder in the Court
Air Force Magazine Online (US), October 2002, Vol 85, No 10

"President Mesic of Croatia is promising that his Government will co-operate fully in trials of Croatians accused of atrocities during its independence war.... The country’s relations with Europe have also become stronger in recent years, as evidence of alleged American involvement in the ruthless campaign to drive Serbs from the region has begun to emerge.... 200,000 Serbs [were] driven from the Krajina region during the 1995 Croatian offensive.... Croatia, however, cannot arrest the most wanted Croatian, General Ante Gotovina, because he is hiding in neighbouring Bosnia.... Another major obstacle is American concern that if General Gotovina is arrested he may carry out a threat to disclose the previously unknown extent of US covert involvement in the Krajina offensive...."
Croatia in pledge to help war crime trials
London Times, 14 June 2003

"Mr. Dujic hasn't set foot in the small two-story home in this railroad town since he and thousands of other ethnic Serbs fled a Croatian army onslaught called 'Operation Storm' in 1995. A city document confirms that he owns the building, but the ethnic Croatians occupying it won't budge, and Croatian officials refuse to evict them. 'I have no country except this one, and it doesn't want me,' says Mr. Dujic, a 69-year-old former hotel manager, breaking into tears at a sidewalk cafe near his house. 'I was a manager. I always had some money,' he says. 'Now I have to crawl around here like a dog.' Former co-worker Tatjana Grgic, an ethnic Croatian who works in the Red Cross office here, says Mr. Dujic was no Serb nationalist. 'He was a good man,' she says. 'But the war has done what it has done. It's a normal thing.' Normal in the Balkans, perhaps. To Western countries, banishing ethnic minorities from a region is officially abhorrent. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has responded to Serbia's 'ethnic cleansing' of Albanian minorities in the Serbian province of Kosovo with a punishing, four-week bombing campaign. The U.S. vows to return an estimated 600,000 Kosovo refugees to their homes. The experience of Croatia, Serbia's next-door neighbor, suggests that a massive return is a pipe dream. Croatia, which split from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991, has welcomed back fewer than 20% of its 350,000 departed Serbs. Almost all the returnees are elderly people wanting to claim pensions or be buried with their parents. Serbs are 'free to come,' says Croatia's assistant foreign minister, Josip Paro. But while proclaiming that policy, Croatia encouraged ethnic Croatians to occupy Serb homes and stalled thousands of Serbs trying to get Croatian citizenship or reclaim their property. Now, it is helping Serbs unload their homes at a steep discount, and is building houses for ethnic Croat refugees in formerly Serb villages. 'It's a slow, bureaucratic ethnic cleansing,' charges Ivan Zvonimir Cicak, a Croatian opposition figure and humanrights activist. Ethnic cleansing tends to stick, and not only because of government policy. Younger Serbs have made new lives in Yugoslavia or in the Serbian-run section of Bosnia, another former Yugoslav republic. Others have emigrated to richer Western countries, or hope to keep their chances of emigration alive by preserving their refugee status. By some estimates, half of those who fled Croatia will never try to return. Many Croatians, convinced that 'war criminals' are coming back, predict trouble from returning Serbs. 'I think they should be eliminated,' says a Croatian soldier and Operation Storm participant who identifies himself only as Ante, drinking a beer during a rock concert in Knin to benefit war widows. Human-rights activists say several returning Serbs in a nearby village have been killed by fresh mines planted in haystacks. Even some liberals wonder if separation is best. 'We tried one way and it didn't work,' says Zagreb architect Nikola Oreskovic, in a bus rolling past Croat villages destroyed by Serbs and Serb villages destroyed by Croats. 'Maybe we should try another way.' Ethnic cleansing, horrible as it is, can be effective. Republika Srpska, an almost completely Serb ministate within Bosnia, has enjoyed relative tranquillity and growing international acceptance, while tensions are rising between Muslims and Croats who live side by side in Bosnia. Croatia is poor but secure, and when it opened its airspace to NATO for the current bombing raids, the U.S. lifted an arms embargo, despite lingering concerns about Operation Storm. That operation was 'the most efficient ethnic cleansing we've seen in the Balkans,' says Carl Bildt, former European Community mediator in the Balkans. 'There was a blinking yellow light given to it in 1995, and there hasn't really been any sustained international pressure to reverse it.' One of the few critics of the operation, he says acquiescing to ethnic separation would be 'horrifying' because the Balkans' ethnic patchwork is so complex. Croatia denies any ethnic cleansing, noting that it urged Serbs to stay put during Operation Storm. But soldiers also shelled residential areas, killed civilians and let Croats burn and plunder Serb homes, according to a United Nations report. Many intact homes in Knin still bear the painted words 'Croat-Don't Touch.' Serbs came here to the Krajina region in the 14th century, when the Turks routed them from Kosovo. The Austro-Hungarian empire gave the Serbs of Krajina (the name means 'frontier') free land in exchange for defending the empire's eastern border from the Turks. Serbs became the city dwellers, and the majority in their region, despite Croatian fascists' attempts to exterminate Serbs during World War II. Krajina Serbs broke into armed rebellion in 1991 as Yugoslavia collapsed, and Knin, with its ancient hilltop fortress, became the capital of the Republic of Serbian Krajina. The republic lasted four years and fell in four days. Knin's Serbs had just minutes to pack on Aug. 5, 1995, when their army warned them to leave. Many thought they would be back within a few days. Mr. Dujic says he was at his cousin's house at a nearby village. He had no time to drive back to Knin to grab the family jewelry. Instead, he and his relatives took his son's car, which had the most gas, and drove to Belgrade, capital of Yugoslavia in the Republic of Serbia. The flight of about 200,000 Krajina Serbs set off an ethnic chain reaction. Many refugees pushed east into Serb-held territory in Bosnia. In the city of Banja Luka, Josipu Guroljevski, an ethnic Croat, says Serbs pounded on his door Aug. 16 and told him to leave the following morning or die. He and his wife, Stazji, spent a month as refugees before hearing of empty houses in Knin. Croatia gave citizenship to any ethnic Croatian, and eventually 6,000 Croatians from Bosnia would settle in and around Knin. The Guroljevskis say they went to City Hall and got a list of available houses. Mr. Dujic's house was in the best repair, with room for relatives upstairs. The furniture was overturned, the rooms looted and humid; but after painting and repair, the house became the Guroljevski's home, with an official occupancy permit. A Virgin Mary hangs on the wall. Potted plants sit outside the door....The Krajina region seems in little danger of going Serb. Before the war, 11% of the citizens in the Knin municipality were Croats. Now Knin is half the size, and 71% Croat. Streets have new Croatian names. At the police station, where a dozen elderly Serbs line up each morning to get documents signed, all the officers are Croats. Serbian staff members were cleared from the hospital and schools as well, and replaced with Croats from Bosnia, says Knin economist and activist Nevena Zunjic."
Daniel Pearl - Few Serbs Chased From Croatia In 1995 Have Made It Back Home
Wall St Journal, 22 April 1999

"For years, Saudi Arabia flatly denied it had provided money and logistical support for Islamist militant groups that attacked Western targets. But that assertion is disputed by a former al-Qaeda commander who testified in a United Nations war-crimes trial that his unit was funded by the Saudi High Commission for Relief of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ali Ahmed Ali Hamad, the former al-Qaeda fighter, gave the same account to The Inquirer in an interview in this struggling city in the central Balkans.  'Because it was the biggest charity, [the commission] helped the mujaheddin the most,' Hamad said, adding that it had provided 'everything a person needed to exist.' Hamad, 37, is expected to be called as a witness in a lawsuit filed by Cozen O'Connor alleging that Saudi Arabia and affiliated charities financed al-Qaeda and other groups as they geared up for the 9/11 attacks. As a convicted terrorist, Hamad is an imperfect witness. During the Balkans war, from 1992 to 1995, jihadists from North Africa and the Middle East were accused of atrocities against indigenous Serbs and Croatians. Hamad admits having done 'bad things' as an al-Qaeda fighter, and he is serving a 10-year sentence in a Bosnian jail for his role in a 1997 Mostar bombing. Yet Hamad's account of his time in the Balkans went largely uncontroverted during the U.N. trial, where he was a prosecution witness. He contends that the Saudi High Commission, an agency of the Saudi government, and other Islamist charities supported al-Qaeda-led units that committed atrocities. Mujaheddin units, he said, recruited fighters, prepared for battle, and financed their operations in the Balkans. He said the Saudi High Commission had poured tens of millions of dollars into mujaheddin units led by al-Qaeda operatives who fought with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. Money intended for humanitarian relief bought weapons and other military supplies. The charities also provided false identification, employment papers, diplomatic plates and vehicles that permitted Islamist fighters to enter the country and pass easily through military checkpoints, Hamad said. Several charity offices, including those of the Saudi High Commission, were led by former mujaheddin or al-Qaeda members, at least one of whom trained with Hamad in an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, he said. Like other al-Qaeda fighters, Hamad said, he was an employee of the Saudi High Commission for a time and traveled through the war zone in commission vehicles with diplomatic plates."
A former al-Qaeda fighter accuses a Saudi charity
Philadelphia Inquirer, 31 May 2008

"A former Al-Qaeda member and Bosnian mujahedin is seeking asylum in Serbia after being released from jail in Bosnia-Herzegovina, RFE/RL's South Slavic and Albanian Languages Service reports.   Ali Ahmed Ali Hamad, a native of Bahrain, was recently released from a Bosnian prison where he served a 12-year term for robbery and terrorism. A veteran of the 1992-95 Bosnian war, Ali Hamad has promised to tell Serbian officials about crimes that were committed against Serbs and Croats by mujahedin units in exchange for asylum.  Serbian war crimes unit spokesman Bruno Vekaric says that he is interested in listening to Ali Hamad. Ali Hamad has told local media that he is a reformed terrorist who is ready to help 'fight terrorism.' He is waiting in Lukavica, Serbia, for a decision on whether he will be extradited to Bahrain or given asylum."
Former Al-Qaeda Member, Bosnian Fighter Seeks Asylum In Serbia
Radio Free Europe, 14 January 2009

"Since the beginning of the war in the spring of 1992, Bosnian Serbs, supported by Serbia, bombarded the town [of Mostar] from the mountains overlooking it. A year later, in May 1993, the Croatian militias of the separatist 'Herzeg-Bosna' movement, supported by Croatia, turned against their Muslim allies, chased them out of the western part of the town and forced them into a small area of a few square kilometers. Thus was created an enclave squeezed between the Serbian and Croatian fronts."
20 Years Later: The Bosnian Conflict in Photographs
TIME, 5 April 2012

"The Central Intelligence Agency has its own argot for describing the hallucinatory world within which its employees move. None of its esoteric terms are more euphemistic than 'blowback', the term coined to describe operations which end up rebounding against their creators. But as the Americans slowly unravel the international network surrounding Osama bin Laden, the man they blame for the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, 'blowback' is exactly what they are finding.  Last week, it was revealed that one of those under arrest is a former Egyptian soldier named Ali Mohamed, who is alleged to have provided training and assistance to Mr bin Laden's operatives. Yet Mr Mohamed, it is clear from his record, was working for the US government at the time he provided the training: he was a Green Beret, part of America's Special Forces....   It had already been known that in those days, the US and Mr bin Laden were on the same side, but it now appears that America may actually have aided Mr bin Laden's organisation and even trained some of those who it now contends are 'terrorists'. Mr Ali may be the missing link. It had already been known that in 1989, Mr Ali came to the New York area to train mujahedin on their way to Afghanistan. Those visits have put him in the spotlight once before: among those he trained was El Sayyid Nosair, who was jailed in 1995 for killing Rabbi Meir Kahane, leader of the Jewish Defence League, and, along with several others, with plotting to blow up several New York landmarks. At his trial, Mr Nosair claimed that the reason he had military manuals was that he was being trained by the US, not because he was intent on terrorism. It is uncertain whether Mr Mohamed came to New York on official business, but for some of the trips, he was a serving US Special Forces' sergeant. Mr Mohamed met the men at the Al-Kifah Refugee Centre in Brooklyn's Atlantic Avenue, a place of pivotal importance to Operation Cyclone, the American effort to support the mujahedin. The Al-Kifah Centre and the associated Afghan Refugee Services Inc were raising funds and, crucially, providing recruits for the struggle, with active American assistance....  In December 1992, a US army official met one of the Afghan veterans from Al-Kifah and offered help with a covert operation to support the Muslims in Bosnia, funded with Saudi money, according to one of those jailed for assisting with the New York bombings."
Terror 'blowback' burns CIA
Independent, 1 November 1998

"... it was the covert arming and training of the Bosnians by the US, in breach of the UN arms embargo resolution, that was responsible for prolonging the suffering of the people of Bosnia. For Izetbegovic's government was thereby persuaded to abandon the UN peace process and not to sign up to various UN-brokered peace proposals on offer, such as those I helped broker in 1994. The correct lesson to draw from the war in Bosnia with regards to Syria is that arming any of the warring parties, however just may seem their cause, inevitably increases the intensity of conflict. "
General Sir Michael Rose, Commander, UN Forces, Bosnia 1994
Letter - London Times, 16 April 2013, Print Edition, P29

CIA Uses Belgian Arms Dealer To Supply Iranian Weapons To
Islamic Militants In Bosnia

"It has been reported in the Iranian capital, Tehran, that a Belgian citizen arrested on spying charges is a well known international arms dealer. .... informed sources have now confirmed press reports circulating in France and Belgium that the arrested man is a well known Belgian arms dealer, Jacques Monsieur.... Mr Monsieur was apparently no stranger to Iran - he is reported to have played a big role in exporting Iranian arms to Bosnia in the early 1990s as well as to other countries in Africa and elsewhere."
Belgian arms dealer held in Iran
BBC Online, 24 January 2001

"A certain company from Bratislava, Joy Slovakia, was Cappiau's main long-time connection, and it also served as a cover for a Belgian arms dealer, Jacques Monsieur. Monsieur, who is claimed by foreign news media to having smuggled over 650 tons of various weapons at the height of the war in the former Yugoslavia, on his part had numerous contacts with the Belgian, French, American and Israeli intelligence services, and his name was linked to many illegal arms deals with Iran, Congo-Brazzaville and Croatia."
Links between Organized Crime and Croatia's Top Brass
AIM, 16 April 2001

"48 years old, this former officer of the Belgian army [Jacques Monsieur] was of all the wars and all the traffics of weapons of these twenty last years. Before [his] arrest in Iran in November 2000, [he] was the subject of a judicial enquiry on behalf of French justice for deliveries of weapons in Croatia between 1991 and 1995 after the bursting of Yugoslavia. But to the French judge who questioned [him], [he] answered that [he] had the support of the French secret service in this business.... after the end of the war Iran-Iraq (1988) and the bursting of the USSR and Yugoslavia, [he] started to deliver weapons, in particular Iranian, with the Croats and later with the Bosnians. In 1991, the United Nations issued an embargo on the sales of weapons to the belligerents of ex-Yugoslavia. 'I was contacted in Brussels by an agent of the CIA to organize this operation and to deliver weapons to the anti-Serb forces', [he] declared."
[Google Translation From Original French]
Jacques Monsieur condemned in Iran
RFI Actualite, [Date not indicated - Dec 2001?]

"After 18 months spent behind the bars of an Iranian prison, the merchant of weapons Jacques Mister left Teheran. Destination: Brussels.... In Brussels, Jacques Mister was already judged with the last autumn for related facts with his activity. A judgment by default (imprisoned in Teheran, [he] could not answer the convocation of the court) which opens the way with a new lawsuit, in front of the same jurisdiction..... This man impassioned by the horses Lusitanians could then tell the lower parts and the springs of the traffic of weapons. … How [he] settled in France, in 1992, to organize the deliveries of Iranian weapons to the Bosnian soldiers and Croatian during the conflict of Balkans… "
[Google Translation From Original French]
Jacques  Monsieur judged soon in Europe
RFI Actualite, 18 May 2002

"Believed to be among the biggest arms traffickers in Europe, [Jacques] Monsieur had violated a United Nations embargo by shipping arms to Bosnia and Croatia during the long bloody conflict in those countries, with the approval, he later claimed, of both the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the Direction de Surveillance de Territoire (DST), the French domestic intelligence service.... In September 2000, Monsieur told a French judge of having been contacted in 1991 in Brussels by the CIA, and, with the blessing of the French DST, of having sent tens of millions of dollars of weapons to Croatia. From 1991 to 1995, he found his best markets in Croatia and Bosnia, even though the two countries were under a United Nations embargo..... Another French magistrate, who is well versed in the Croatian trafficking case, said it was a political operation. 'A decision from on high led, in 1995, to the cancellation of a fourth wave of weapons deliveries to former Yugoslavia,' implying that French authorities had tacitly approved the prior three 'waves' of weapons shipments."
The Field Marshal
The Centre For Public Integrity, 15 November 2002

"Belgian arms trafficker Jacques Monsieur appeared in a Brussels court on 12 November, Brussels' 'Le Soir' reported two days later. A long-time supplier of Iran's who held an Iranian diplomatic passport, he was arrested in Tehran in November 2000 (see 'RFE/RL Iran Report,' 27 September 1999 and 14 May 2001). The hearing in Brussels confirmed Tehran's provision to Croatia and Bosnia of artillery shells, white phosphorous, and other military goods via Monsieur..."
Belgian Arms Trial Reveals Iranian Connection
RFE/RL Newsline, 15 November 2002

"I had relationships to certain American [intelligence] services. But I prefer not to specify it..... The mandate of the soldiers of UNO and NATO sent was very restrictive. They had just a mandate of observation, even not a mandate of response. Therefore, it was decided to help them. [I] was thus organized an appointment with president Tudjman, whom I did not know. We made a review of the military situation, equipment of which laid out the adversary, the Serb ones, and of all the lacks of the new Croatian army. Afterwards, I submitted my reports/ratios, I transmitted to the appropriate authority and then one studied what one could do. I organized a series of military deliveries of materials, in Croatia initially, then in Bosnia. There was of all: equipment, ammunition, armament..... In Croatia, the supplies were done mainly by sea, therefore it was consequent, yes. For Bosnia, the deliveries were done by air.... First, at the time where the war burst only in Croatia, UNO had issued a naval blockade in all the Adriatic Sea. Thus it was practically impossible to have access to a Croatian or Yugoslav port without passing by this blockade with all that that implied: controls at sea Adriatic, monitoring in the Yugoslav ports… Therefore, indeed, without a certain 'green light' it was impossible to convey these materials over there on the spot."
[Google Translation From Original French]
Confessions of a merchant of weapons (Interview with Jacques Monsieur)
RFI Actualite, 6 December 2004

"In the Eighties, Jacques Monsieur affirms to have accomplished many voyages in the Eastern European countries.... At the time of the conflict in ex-Yugoslavia, 1992 to 1995, [he] is again that which implements the double game of the policy of the Western allies, while equipping with the belligerents normally subjected to an embargo of UNO.... [His] Team [includes] Jean-Bernard Lasnaud: correspondent of Jacques Monsieur installed close to Miami in Florida. This French, very known on the market of the armament, seems to profit from a direct protection of the CIA.... James Marty Cappiau: former Belgian parachutist, reconverted into private safety, after having been useful in the rows of the Croatian army."
[Google Translation From Original French]
The device of Jacques Mister
RFI Actualite, 6 December 2004

"At 51 years, Jacques Monsieur leaves his silence and speaks about his activity about merchant about weapons. French justice with [his]cases, the man lives in Belgium where it benefits from a bail. For [his] defense [he] ensures that the traffic of weapons was only one cover for activities of espionage to the profit of Western services of information [i.e. western intelligence] ..... Refined and polyglot, the agent Monsieur would have initially worked for the SGR, the military secret service Belgian, while being supervised by the American services on which [he] refuses to be more precise. The nature even of the operations of which [he] participle lets think that the CIA is not foreign with [his] activities. In particular at the time of Irangate (supply of weapons in Iran by the Americans in full Iran-Iraq war and whereas Washington and Teheran are with drawn knives). In this context, the pecuniary motivation of the services is not to exclude, because the values of the tenders concerned are colossal. Certain services of information could engage these operations to finance their own clandestine activities or to weaken the enemy....Beyond the principles, the way in which the intermediary circumvents the embargoes or the devices legal into force shows that such an activity cannot be considered without the active complicity of the military authorities. The supply of weapons and ammunition in Croatia and Bosnia is the example more completed. Whereas UNO and the forces of NATO impose a naval blockade Adriatique at sea, several cargo liners deliver their goods directly in Croatian ports. For Bosnia, the deliveries are carried out by Iliouchine cargo aircrafts being posed on airports theoretically controlled by the blue helmets! Consequently, difficult not to give a certain credit to the assumption of the 'amber light' (semi-official agreement) granted by the secret service."
[Google Translation From Original French]
Jacques Monsieur says 'the Fox': merchant of weapons and spy?
RFI Actualite, 6 December 2004

"Fourteen nations, including the US, support a $400 million 'Bosnian Defense Fund,' which reportedly collects cash and equipment contributions for a 'train and equip' program that is operated by the US. [Arms Trade News, 10/1997] According to investigative journalist Wayne Madsen, a former Naval Officer who has worked with the NSA: 'Via something called the Bosnia Defense Fund, these countries [Saudi Arabia, Iran, Malaysia, Brunei, Jordan, and Egypt] deposited millions of dollars into US coffers to buy weapons for the Bosnians…. According to Washington K Street sources, the law firm that established the Bosnia Defense Fund was none other than Feith and Zell, the firm of current Pentagon official and leading neo-con Douglas Feith. Feith’s operation at Feith and Zell was assisted by his one-time boss and current member of Rumsfeld’s Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle.' [CounterPunch, 9/18/2003]"
Before October 1997: $400 Million Bosnian Defense Fund Fuels Balkan Conflict
Cooperative Research, The use of Islamist militants by American and Israeli militarists

"The U.S. Congress has documented in detail, the links of Al Qaeda to agencies of the U.S. government during the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as in Kosovo"
Political Deception: The Missing Link behind 9-11
Centre for Research on Globalisation, Global Outlook, No. 2. Summer 2002

"A desperate Bosniak-dominated Bosnian government, facing an international arms embargo and outgunned by breakaway Bosnian Serb forces, accepted the help of Iran, as well as several thousand Islamic radicals, mercenaries, and others. The 1995 Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the conflict, required all foreign forces to leave Bosnia. Most did, but some Islamic radicals remained behind. It is estimated that several hundred former fighters stayed behind in Bosnia after the war and became Bosnian citizens by marrying Bosnian women. Others reportedly received citizenship through bribing Bosnian officials. Some Al Qaeda operatives in Bosniareportedly had connections to members of Bosnia’s intelligence service, another legacy of Bosniak wartime cooperation with Islamic militants. The experience of the Bosnia conflict has also had an impact on terrorist groups worldwide. Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda figures mention the Bosnian war as a place where Al Qaeda was active, and as an important militant Islamic cause. Terrorist recruiting videos often include footage of combat in Bosnia. In addition to fighters, Bosniaks also received assistance during and after the war from Islamic charities and humanitarian organizations, many of them from Saudi Arabia. Some of these groups served as fronts for Al Qaeda, which used them for planning attacks in Bosnia and elsewhere."
Islamic Terrorism and the Balkans
Congressional Research Service, 26 July 2005

"For years, Saudi Arabia flatly denied it had provided money and logistical support for Islamist militant groups that attacked Western targets. But that assertion is disputed by a former al-Qaeda commander who testified in a United Nations war-crimes trial that his unit was funded by the Saudi High Commission for Relief of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ali Ahmed Ali Hamad, the former al-Qaeda fighter, gave the same account to The Inquirer in an interview in this struggling city in the central Balkans. 'Because it was the biggest charity, [the commission] helped the mujaheddin the most,' Hamad said, adding that it had provided 'everything a person needed to exist.' Hamad, 37, is expected to be called as a witness in a lawsuit filed by Cozen O'Connor alleging that Saudi Arabia and affiliated charities financed al-Qaeda and other groups as they geared up for the 9/11 attacks. As a convicted terrorist, Hamad is an imperfect witness. During the Balkans war, from 1992 to 1995, jihadists from North Africa and the Middle East were accused of atrocities against indigenous Serbs and Croatians. Hamad admits having done 'bad things' as an al-Qaeda fighter, and he is serving a 10-year sentence in a Bosnian jail for his role in a 1997 Mostar bombing. Yet Hamad's account of his time in the Balkans went largely uncontroverted during the U.N. trial, where he was a prosecution witness. He contends that the Saudi High Commission, an agency of the Saudi government, and other Islamist charities supported al-Qaeda-led units that committed atrocities. Mujaheddin units, he said, recruited fighters, prepared for battle, and financed their operations in the Balkans. He said the Saudi High Commission had poured tens of millions of dollars into mujaheddin units led by al-Qaeda operatives who fought with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. Money intended for humanitarian relief bought weapons and other military supplies.The charities also provided false identification, employment papers, diplomatic plates and vehicles that permitted Islamist fighters to enter the country and pass easily through military checkpoints, Hamad said. Several charity offices, including those of the Saudi High Commission, were led by former mujaheddin or al-Qaeda members, at least one of whom trained with Hamad in an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, he said. Like other al-Qaeda fighters, Hamad said, he was an employee of the Saudi High Commission for a time and traveled through the war zone in commission vehicles with diplomatic plates."
A former al-Qaeda fighter accuses a Saudi charity
Philadelphia Inquirer, 31 May 2008

"Intelligence services of the Nordic-Polish SFOR Brigade suspect that a center for training terrorists from Islamic countries is located in the Bocina Donja village near Maglaj in Bosnia, Warsaw daily Rzecspospolita writes on Tuesday. The author of the article, Marek Popowsky, who used to be in both SFOR and its predecessor IFOR in Bosnia, writes that mujahideen had first come to Bosnia in 1992, and numbered over 3,000 in the summer of 1995. Besides mujahideen from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan, there were several hundred Muslim extremists who had come from Italy, France, Germany and Britain, he notes. Deserters from the Turkish, Malaysian and French UNPROFOR battalions also volunteered as mujahideen, Popowsky writes. In addition to dangerous military actions, the mujahideen also carried out a religious and ideological mission, enforcing abidance by the Koran and recruiting young soldiers to die for Allah, Popowsky writes. Noting that Bosniac (Muslim) troops respected their allies but feared them at the same time as Allahs' warriors used to carry out high-risk actions and were cruel fighters, Popowsky quotes Serb officers as saying that the mujahideen never took prisoners. Wounded enemy soldiers were usually decapitated or slaughtered by mujahideen, Popowsky writes. The Dayton Agreement committed (Bosnian Muslim leader) Alija Izetbegovic to remove all foreign fighters from Bosnia, but about one thousand mujahideen who obtained Bosnian citizenship in the meantime remain in Sarajevo, Tuzla, Zenica and about ten villages, the daily writes. The largest group of mujahideen is now in Bocina Donja, a formerly Serb village near Maglaj, the daily writes, adding that the Nordic-Polish intelligence service G-5 is following the activities of such unusual 'settlers', as it suspects that a camp for training terrorists is located in the village following reports from Serb and Croat forces' commanders. Noting that Islamic states had allocated to the Muslim part of Bosnia military and humanitarian aid to the value of over one billion dollars and that decisions to this effect had been taken not only by governments but also by various extremist Muslim groups and informal institutions, the daily writes that the activities of mujahideen in Bocina Donja would continue to be monitored by international special services to prevent the village from being transformed into a base for launching terrorist operations."
Polish Press Reports on Training of Mujahideen in Bosnia
Tanjung, 21 December 1997

"The most wanted terrorist in the world, [Osama] Bin Laden, was issued a Bosnia-Hercegovina passport, Sarajevo weekly `Dani'says in the issue which hit the news stands on Thursday [24th September]. Laden was issued a Bosnian passport by the Bosnian embassy in Vienna in 1993, the source maintains.According to `Dani', the Bosnian Foreign Ministry was seized by panic when Mehrez Aodouni, another Bosnian passport bearer, was arrested in Istanbul on 9th September. What ensued was the destruction of all documents which might connect Bosnian Muslim authorities with the outlawed Saudi millionaire.Bin Laden allegedly obtained the Bosnian passport when the Bosnian Muslim side was making desperate attempts to collect financial assistance from Western and Arabic countries for the defence of the country. During the Bosnian war, Vienna was considered the most important Western destination where to obtain logistic support necessary for the defence of the country."
The most wanted terrorist in the world, Osama Bin Laden, was issued a Bosnia-Hercegovina passport
HINA News Agency, Croatia, 24 September 1999

"The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague has determined that the late Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic was not responsible for war crimes committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. In a stunning ruling, the trial chamber that convicted former Bosnian-Serb president Radovan Karadzic of war crimes and sentenced him to 40 years in prison, unanimously concluded that Slobodan Milosevic was not part of a 'joint criminal enterprise' to victimize Muslims and Croats during the Bosnian war. The March 24th Karadzic judgment states that 'the Chamber is not satisfied that there was sufficient evidence presented in this case to find that Slobodan Milosevic agreed with the common plan' to permanently remove Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats from Bosnian Serb claimed territory.[1]... The trial chamber notes that 'In private meetings, Milosevic was extremely angry at the Bosnian Serb leadership for rejecting the Vance-Owen Plan and he cursed the Accused.'[10] They also found that 'Milosevic tried to reason with the Bosnian Serbs saying that he understood their concerns, but that it was most important to end the war.'[11] The judgment states that 'Milosevic also questioned whether the world would accept that the Bosnian Serbs who represented only one third of the population of BiH would get more than 50% of the territory and he encouraged a political agreement.'[12] At a meeting of the Supreme Defense Council the judgment says that 'Milosevic told the Bosnian Serb leadership that they were not entitled to have more than half the territory in BiH, stating that: ‘there is no way that more than that could belong to us! Because, we represent one third of the population. […] We are not entitled to in excess of half of the territory – you must not snatch away something that belongs to someone else! […] How can you imagine two thirds of the population being crammed into 30% of the territory, while 50% is too little for you?! Is it humane, is it fair?!’ '[13] In other meetings with Serb and Bosnian Serb officials, the judgment notes that Milosevic 'declared that the war must end and that the Bosnian Serbs’ biggest mistake was to want a complete defeat of the Bosnian Muslims.'[14] Because of the rift between Milosevic and the Bosnian-Serbs, the judges note that 'the FRY reduced its support for the RS and encouraged the Bosnian Serbs to accept peace proposals.'[15] The Tribunal’s determination that Slobodan Milosevic was not part of a joint criminal enterprise, and that on the contrary he 'condemned ethnic cleansing'[16] is of tremendous significance because he got blamed for all of the bloodshed in Bosnia, and harsh economic sanctions were imposed on Serbia as a result. Wrongfully accusing Milosevic ranks right up there with invading Iraq only to find that there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction after all."
The Exoneration of Milosevic: the ICTY’s Surprise Ruling
Counter Punch, 1 August 2016

"Earlier this year, in a decision that received minimal media attention, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) ...[ruled that] Milosevic... wanted to prevent the breakup of Yugoslavia, and while he initially supported Bosnian Serb leaders to that end, there is no evidence he was part of a 'joint criminal enterprise' to victimize Muslims and Croats.....    'Based on the evidence before the Chamber regarding the diverging interests that emerged between the Bosnian Serb and Serbian leaderships during the conflict and in particular, Milosevic’s repeated criticism and disapproval of the policies and decisions made by … the Bosnian Serb leadership, the Chamber is not satisfied that there was sufficient evidence presented in this case to find that Slobodan Milosevic agreed with the common plan' to forcibly remove Muslims and Croats from territory claimed by Bosnian Serbs. Indeed, Milosevic 'openly criticised Bosnian Serb leaders … (for) committing ‘crimes against humanity’ and ‘ethnic cleansing.’... 'The idea that he started (the war) is completely false,' says James Bissett, who served as Canada’s ambassador to Yugoslavia in the early 1990s and testified on Milosevic’s behalf. 'I don’t think he was guilty of wanting a ‘Greater Serbia’ or genocide.'”
Shedding new light on Slobodan Milosevic
Ottowa Citizen, 15 August 2016

"In 1999, four years after taking up jihad, the man now known as Aimen Dean had seen enough. What had begun as saving Muslims from persecution in Bosnia had morphed into being part of a cell that had bombed two US embassies, killing 224 people, in Kenya and Tanzania. Heart-thumping with one eye on the door, Dean watched the files of al Qaeda's A to Z of bombs and poisons slowly copy to another hard disk. He knew that this disk would grant him protection if he could reach the authorities—but if he was apprehended, it was a ticket to certain beheading. Once his get-out-of-jail disk was secured, Dean flew to Qatar, where he was arrested by Qatari officials. The people who arrested him gave him a choice: become an asset for UK security or the French. Dean chose the UK and soon became MI6's prized asset, providing a level of access to a part of Afghanistan largely cut off from internet and radar. At one point, he was the only "in" on al Qaeda's WMD regime, helping expose campaigns to gas the New York subway, as well as the recruitment and funding of terror campaigns by UK imams like Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada. Dean's cover was blown in 2006, when an excerpt of The One Percent Doctrine—a book about America's counter-terrorism efforts—was published in TIME magazine. Sources quoted in the book provided enough details about a spy known as "Ali" that al Qaeda command could have conceivably worked out that the mole was the man who'd spent a decade making their bombs.... Dean's journey into jihad was accelerated by personal tragedy. Growing up in Saudi Arabia, his father was killed in a road accident when he was four years old, and his mother died suddenly when he was 14. By 16, a bereft Dean needed little encouragement to follow his high school teacher and older friends, who by this point, were fighting Serbian militia alongside Bosnian Muslims. 'Jihad didn't need me; I needed jihad,' he says. 'On TV, I watched Bosnian Muslims get shot by Serbian snipers or blown up whilst going to buy bread. I wanted to become a martyr for this cause.'...  When the Bosnian War ended, Dean's desperation to become a martyr took him to Afghanistan and al Qaeda's hideout in Darunta. Here, doubts over the group's actions that had trickled into his mind in Bosnia suddenly became a flood. Within three years of leaving his Saudi home, he had witnessed comrades kill Serbian prisoners and was now tasked with making poisons and weapons for killing civilians, testing botulinum toxins on hutches of rabbits. Talk had veered from building weapons to protect vulnerable Muslims to targeting the West with suicide attacks and devices to detonate in cinemas, city squares, and nightclubs. 'Al Qaeda was about killing innocent people,' he says.... During his time in the Darunta camp, six other spies were captured and beheaded. The only one who evaded capture was him. 'I could never watch the trial or executions of spies. My own sanity wouldn't allow it,' he says."
I Was MI6's Top Spy Inside Al Qaeda
Vice, 6 August 2018

"While covering the CIA for the Los Angeles Times and later the New York Times, I found that patiently listening to my sources paid off in unexpected ways. During one interview, a source was droning on about a minor bureaucratic battle inside the CIA when he briefly referred to how then-President Bill Clinton had secretly given the green light to Iran to covertly ship arms to Bosnian Muslims during the Balkan wars. The man had already resumed talking about his bureaucratic turf war when I realized what he had just said and interrupted him, demanding that he go back to Iran. That led me to write a series of stories that prompted the House of Representatives to create a special select committee to investigate the covert Iran-Bosnia arms pipeline."
James Risen - The Biggest Secret
The Intercept, 3 September 2018