[D66] {Spam?} Washington’s “humanitarian” war and the KLA’s crimes

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Washington’s “humanitarian” war and the KLA’s crimes
31 December 2010

Revelations of fascistic crimes carried out by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)
prior to, during and after NATO’s war against the former Yugoslavia should
provide a salutary lesson whenever Washington again cites humanitarian concerns
to justify its predatory war aims.

A report by the Council of Europe describes Kosovo today as a country subject to
“mafia-like structures of organised crime”. It accuses KLA commander and current
prime minister, Hachim Thaci, of heading a criminal network involved in murder,
prostitution and drug trafficking.

This may come as no surprise to those who have witnessed his rise from terrorist
thug to head of the newly “independent” state. But what will be a shock to many
is the grotesque way in the KLA helped finance its operations—by removing and
selling body organs from kidnapped Serb and Kosovan Albanian civilian prisoners.
The practice recalls the barbaric human experiments carried out by the Nazi
“Angel of Death” Josef Mengele in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

The KLA’s crimes only came to light at all because of the unravelling of an
ongoing cover-up by the US, the United Nations and other major powers.
Information about KLA detention facilities in Kosovo and across the border in
Albania first reached the International Centre for the Red Cross in 2000, after
KLA fighters reported that Serb civilians were taken there in 1999 and their
organs removed and sold abroad for transplant operations. The allegations
surfaced once again in a BBC investigation in April last year and in the
publication of the memoirs of International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia (ICTY) Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, revealing that a 2008
investigation into the “organ harvesting” had been dropped because it was
supposedly “impossible to conduct.”

Any prosecution of the KLA was made “impossible” by Washington, which has been
its main sponsor since at least 1998. Following the Bosnian war of 1995, the
KLA, seeking to capitalise on popular resentment among Kosovan Albanians against
the regime of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia, pursued a strategy of destabilising
Kosovo by acts of terrorism in the hope of provoking Western intervention.

NATO was forced to admit that the KLA was “the main initiator of the violence”
and its actions a “deliberate campaign of provocation”. But Washington was
shifting its policy from proscribing the KLA as a terrorist organisation to one
of covert support. During the 1999 Rambouillet negotiations, then US Secretary
of State Madeleine Albright promoted Thaci as the legitimate representative of
the Kosovar people and seated him at the head of the Kosovo delegation. State
Department spokesman James Rubin brushed aside concerns about the criminal
nature of Washington’s new partner, claiming, “We simply don’t have information
to substantiate allegations that there was a KLA leadership-directed program of
assassinations or executions”, and that the State Department had no “credible
evidence” the KLA was involved in drug trafficking.

The adoption of the KLA as an ally was vital to Washington's strategy of
breaking up the Yugoslav republic into its constituent parts, ensuring its own
hegemony within the Balkan region and threatening the broader geo-strategic
interests of Russia. Germany, Britain and other NATO allies all colluded in
glorifying the KLA as a liberation movement fighting to free Kosovo from Serbian
oppression. To this end, US Senator Joseph Lieberman declared that “Fighting for
the KLA is fighting for human rights and American values,” while British Prime
Minister Tony Blair famously proclaimed, “This is a just war, based not on any
territorial ambitions but on values.”

The US has continued to protect Thaci and his criminal gang as it pursued its
goals of ethnic separatism. In 2007, the UN’s special envoy in Kosovo, Martti
Ahtisaari, started to promote Kosovo’s independence from Serbia. Just 11 months
later, on February 17, 2008, Kosovo’s Assembly declared independence. It exists
now as a US fiefdom, heavily dependent on international aid and with all major
decisions pertaining to the economy, public spending, social programmes,
security and trade controlled by the US, which has established its largest base
in the Balkans at Camp Bondsteel.

Only two trials of KLA personnel have ever been held at the ICTY, compared to
the scores involving Serbs. In the second trial the then prime minister Ramush
Haradinaj was acquitted of war crimes charges with the trial judge complaining
about the “significant difficulties” securing witness testimony. This prompted
Del Ponte to complain about the protection Haradinaj was receiving from Western
governments and officials. It was as a result of the Haradinaj trial, when the
first reports of the body organ trade first emerged, that the Council of Europe
was asked by Del Ponte to carry out an investigation.

Equally culpable in concealing the KLA’s criminal activities are the various
ex-liberal and “left” individuals and groups that threw their support behind the
NATO bombing campaign--with claims that this was a humanitarian intervention in
support of the KLA’s struggle for “self-determination”.

At that time, the arch-Conservative opponent of the war and former Defence
Minister, Alan Clark MP, was moved to ask in the Observer, “What amazes me about
the Yugoslav crisis is the credulity of the Left, and of progressive thinkers,
who seem to get a vicarious thrill from seeing B52s taking off from Fairford. I
address them: How have you swallowed whole the CIA-funded propaganda that
demonises the Serbs? Are you not familiar with the duplicity and intimidation of
United States foreign policy? That Ambassador Walker, in charge of monitoring
forces in Bosnia, was financing the Contras? Have you no recall of that 'Free
World' crap that embraced Batista, Noriega, Syngman Rhee, Bao Dai, Lee Van Thieu
and Sukarno?”

In an accompanying editorial, “There is no alternative to this war”, the
Observerresponded to critics of its “allegedly inconsistent standards” with the
rejoinder, “We say so what? ... We have to live in the world as it is, not some
Utopia.”

The indifference to the realities of imperialist policy aims, and the embrace of
the KLA and ethnic separatism, was of a piece with the evolution of this social
layer ever since the first Balkan war in 1991—during which the selective
citation of “humanitarian” considerations was first employed to justify making
peace with imperialism. And nothing will change as a result of the latest
revelations. The liberal media has been largely silent on the charges against
Thaci and wholly silent as regards any editorial mea culpa—denoting their own
agreement with the propaganda mouthpiece of US imperialism, Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty, which insisted, “Regardless of the truth behind the
charges against Thaci and members of the KLA, one should not abandon the broader
perspective, as some otherwise reliable commentators have done.”

Paul Mitchell and Chris Marsden

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/dec2010/pers-d31.shtml