http://thenewamerican.com/tna//1999/05-24-99/vo15no11_kla.htm
As previously reported in these pages (see "Diving into the Kosovo Quagmire" in our March 15th issue), the KLA is allied with Osama bin-Laden's international terrorist network and funded, in large measure, by Albanian organized crime -- particularly heroin trafficking. In 1994, when the insurrectionary KLA was still in its larval stage, France's Observatire Geopolitique Des Drogues, a counter-narcotics bureau attached to the European Commission, reported that "heroin shipment and marketing networks are taking root among ethnic Albanian communities in Albania, Macedonia, and the Kosovo province of Serbia, in order to finance large purchases of weapons destined ... for the brewing war in Kosovo."
Disclaimer: I do not know anything about "New American" except that they say they are conservative... Last time I checked conservatives were in power in USA...
The heroin angle is not unheard of, note. Many guerrilla movements around the world "tax" local drug crops to finance their operations. However Kosovo is (with the possible exception of Afghanistan IIRC) the only place where the traffickers and the rebel leaders are so closely connected - frequently the same people. The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake
If you except dreamers like Rugova there's no such thing as a civil Kosovo. Nine years on and the kosovars have destroyed the province, thanks also to the disastrous UN presence- a petty corrupt inefficient monarchy. It's a failed province, imagine as a state.
There's no way that territory should become a state, much less remotely deserve it. On what grounds? Turning Arkan's mobster business partners into token infantry under NATO's massive bombing isn't my idea of a liberation movement. Got any other states in mind that should be dismembered by might?
I agree, OBL is unadultered bullshit.
