The Washington Times
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
May 12, 2006Just plain wrong
Adm. James "Ace" Lyons Jr. has provided us with an honest assessment of the realities in Kosovo ("Kosovo consternation," Commentary, Tuesday). These conditions preceded the breakup of Yugoslavia. The federal government in Belgrade was faced not only with such criminal activities in Kosovo, but also with provocations against its Serb minority, causing a steady exodus of Serbs into Serbia proper. This movement, together with higher Albanian birth rates and illegal immigration into Kosovo from Albania, reduced the Serbian population to an insignificant minority. The provocations were conducted by the Kosovo Liberation Army. The KLA also was responsible for the illicit drug and prostitution racketeering operating out of Kosovo. For these activities, the KLA and its leaders are about to be rewarded with an ethnically pure independent state from a province that is legally a part of Serbia and the religious and cultural cradle of the Serbian nation.
GEORGE C. THOMAS
Visiting U.S. Fulbright Professor
Faculty of the Political Sciences
Belgrade University
Serbia Montenegrohttp://washingtontimes.com/commentary/20060508-091537-7458r.htm
THE WASHINGTON TIMES (USA)
COMMENTARY
Kosovo consternation
By James "Ace" Lyons Jr.
Published May 9, 2006
Among the most important priorities of U.S. global policy is combating the
international traffic in drugs and in persons (often a euphemism for women
and children forced into prostitution).
Because of the linkage and overlap among terrorist networks and
organized criminal gangs, the battle against trafficking is also an integral
part of the war on terror.
Fighting organized criminal activities is difficult even in countries
with a functioning legal system, honest police and the rule of law. Think
how much harder that would be when dealing with an independent country where
the authorities are an integral part of the criminal enterprise.
Amazingly, that's what the international community seems to want to help
establish in the Serbian province of Kosovo. When Kosovo was placed under
United Nations administration and NATO military control at the end of the
1999 war, some hoped the province soon would meet at least minimum
qualifications for some kind of independence, as demanded by Muslim
Albanians who greatly outnumber the remaining Christian Serbs.
That hasn't happened. Instead the drug, sex slave, weapons,
money-laundering, and other illicit trades that helped fuel the conflicts of
the 1990s have continued to grow. Just this month Marek Antoni Nowicki,
Poland's leading human-rights lawyer and the U.N.'s international ombudsman
for Kosovo until last year, denounced the "real criminal state in power" in
Kosovo, working right under the nose of the U.N. and NATO. "Crime groups
have been able to operate with impunity," said Mr. Nowicki. "These networks
can rely on the weakness of the public institutions to sanction their
operations." Mr. Nowicki's charges came on the heels of a March 2006 report
by the U.N.'s internal watchdog agency, the Office of Internal Oversight,
which found the head of U.N. Mission -- who holds virtually dictatorial
powers -- derelict for ignoring fraud and other abuses at the airport in
Kosovo's capital, Pristina.
None of this should come as any surprise. Even in 1999, when the Clinton
administration decided to take military action in support of the so-called
Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), there were numerous and credible intelligence
and news reports of the KLA's criminal and terrorist inclinations.
Predictably, KLA veterans found even more opportunity to ply their illicit
trades when, ostensibly demobilized, they were recruited by the UN into
Kosovo's police, civil administration, and quasi-military "Kosovo Protection
Corps." The foxes were asked to guard the chicken coop -- another U.N.
fiasco.
As described in reports issued by the NATO Parliamentary Assembly,
criminal activity in Kosovo continues to be closely tied to operations of
the Albanian mafia across Europe, from home bases in Kosovo and adjacent
areas of Albania and Macedonia. For example (from 2003): "According to the
International Organization for Migration and EUROPOL, the principal supplier
countries [i.e., for trafficked women] today are Moldova (up to 80 percent:
many Moldovan villages do not have any more women), Bulgaria, Romania and
Ukraine. The networks used various routes, including the route that passes
through Kosovo, Albania, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (see the
village of Veledze, the regional centre of prostitution) and Montenegro,
then through Italy. The Albanian mafia has set up a real cartel on
prostitution. It handles more than 65 percent of the trafficking in women in
the Balkans." From 2004: "In Kosovo, as many as 80 percent of internally
trafficked victims are children."
The response of international bureaucrats to this disgrace is
predictable: ignore it and hope nobody notices. Or even better, pretend all
is going well, declare the mission a success -- and hand power over to the
criminals as the new sovereign "government."
If that happens, even the minimal interference in the Kosovo-based
gangs' operations will be removed. A criminal state not seen since the
defunct Taliban regime in Afghanistan will be set up with easy proximity to
the rest of Europe.
Such an outcome would make a mockery of some of the United States' most
important global security priorities. While the international community
desires some sort of "closure" to the ongoing mess in Kosovo (and this is
understandable), it is hard to think of a supposed solution worse than
independence. Seven years after the 1999 war, this is one Clinton legacy
that demands urgent reconsideration.
James "Ace" Lyons Jr. is a retired admiral in the U.S. Navy. He is a
former commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet (the largest single
military command in the world), senior U.S. military representative to the
United Nations and as deputy chief of Naval operations and was principal
adviser on all Joint Chiefs of Staff matters.
letters@washingtontimes.com
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