[Marxism] What's new at Links: Tibet; Venezuela; Nepal; Communist Manifesto at 160; Kosova

[Louis Proyect]

glparramatta wrote:
  >     Imperialism's long-term opposition to Kosova's independence
>     <http://www.links.org.au/node/322>
> 
> By *Michael Karadjis*
> 
> The previous article <http://www.links.org.au/node/296> of this series 
> showed that the basis for Kosova's right to self-determination is real, 
> and that there has been a genuine, mass-based striving for it all 
> century. Yet some on the left have argued that Kosova's recent 
> declaration of independence is merely an initiative of the imperialist 
> powers, which allegedly have had a long-term aim to create an 
> ``independent'' Kosovar state under their control.

 From Karadjis's article:

"The Albanian government appealed to the West to arm the KLA, but the US 
State Department spokesperson James Rubin stated the US continued to 
oppose arming or training them."

Sunday Times (London)
March 12, 2000, Sunday
CIA aided Kosovo guerrilla army

BYLINE: Tom Walker and Aidan Laverty

AMERICAN intelligence agents have admitted they helped to train the 
Kosovo Liberation Army 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.

Central Intelligence Agency officers were ceasefire monitors in Kosovo 
in 1998 and 1999, developing ties with the KLA and giving American 
military training manuals and field advice on fighting the Yugoslav army 
and Serbian police.

When the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), 
which co-ordinated the monitoring, left Kosovo a week before airstrikes 
began a year ago, many of its satellite telephones and global 
positioning systems were secretly handed to the KLA, ensuring that 
guerrilla commanders could stay in touch with Nato and Washington. 
Several KLA leaders had the mobile phone number of General Wesley Clark, 
the Nato commander.

European diplomats then working for the OSCE claim it was betrayed by an 
American policy that made airstrikes inevitable. Some have questioned 
the motives and loyalties of William Walker, the American OSCE head of 
mission.

"The American agenda consisted of their diplomatic observers, aka the 
CIA, operating on completely different terms to the rest of Europe and 
the OSCE," said a European envoy.

Several Americans who were directly involved in CIA activities or close 
to them have spoken to the makers of Moral Combat, a documentary to be 
broadcast on BBC2 tonight, and to The Sunday Times about their 
clandestine roles. Walker dismissed suggestions that he had wanted war 
in Kosovo, but admitted the CIA was almost certainly involved in the 
countdown to airstrikes.

Initially some "diplomatic observers" arrived, followed in October by a 
much larger group that was eventually swallowed up into the OSCE's 
"Kosovo Verification Mission".

Walker said: "Overnight we went from having a handful of people to 130 
or more. Could the agency have put them in at that point? Sure they 
could. It's their job. But nobody told me."

Walker, who was nominated by Madeleine Albright, the American secretary 
of state, was intensely disliked by Belgrade. He had worked briefly for 
the United Nations in Croatia. Ten years earlier he was the American 
ambassador to El Salvador when Washington was helping the government 
there to suppress leftist rebels while supporting the contra guerrillas 
against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

Some European diplomats in Pristina, Kosovo's capital, concluded from 
Walker's background that he was inextricably linked with the CIA. The 
picture was muddied by the continued separation of American "diplomatic 
observers" from the mission. The CIA sources who have now broken their 
silence say the diplomatic observers were more closely connected to the 
agency.

"It was a CIA front, gathering intelligence on the KLA's arms and 
leadership," said one.

Another agent, who said he felt he had been "suckered in" by an 
organisation that has run amok in post-war Kosovo, said: "I'd tell them 
which hill to avoid, which wood to go behind, that sort of thing."

The KLA has admitted its long-standing links with American and European 
intelligence organisations. Shaban Shala, a KLA commander now involved 
in attempts to destabilise majority Albanian villages beyond Kosovo's 
border in Serbia proper, claimed he had met British, American and Swiss 
agents in northern Albania in 1996.

Belgrade has alleged the CIA also helped to arm the KLA, but this was 
denied by the guerrillas and agency sources.

"It was purely the Albanian diaspora helping their brothers," said 
Florin Krasniqi, a New York builder and one of the KLA's biggest 
financiers. He described how sniper rifles were exported from America 
using a loophole in federal law that allowed them to be shipped to 
"hunting clubs". Armour piercing Barratt rifles made their way to the 
KLA's "hunting club" in Albania.

Agim Ceku, the KLA commander in the latter stages of the conflict, had 
established American contacts through his work in the Croatian army, 
which had been modernised with the help of Military Professional 
Resources Inc, an American company specialising in military training and 
procurement. This company's personnel were in Kosovo, along with others 
from a similar company, Dyncorps, that helped in the American-backed 
programme for the Bosnian army.