Kosovo in 1999, Part 2

We continue from Part 1:

Covert financing of "freedom fighters"

Remember Oliver North and the Contras? The pattern in Kosovo is similar to other CIA covert operations in Central America, Haiti and Afghanistan where "freedom fighters" were financed through the laundering of drug money. Since the onslaught of the Cold War, Western intelligence agencies have developed a complex relationship to the illegal narcotics trade. In case after case, drug money laundered in the international banking system has financed covert operations.

According to author Alfred McCoy, the pattern of covert financing was established in the Indochina war. In the 1960s, the Meo army in Laos was funded by the narcotics trade as part of Washington's military strategy against the combined forces of the neutralist government of Prince Souvanna Phouma and the Pathet Lao.[6]

The pattern of drug politics set in Indochina has since been replicated in Central America and the Caribbean. "The rising curve of cocaine imports to the US", wrote journalist John Dinges "followed almost exactly the flow of US arms and military advisers to Central America".[7]

There are numerous allegations about planeloads of weapons going south to the Contras, or to whomever, and planeloads of drugs coming back north to the United States. It seems the aircraft going south with the weapons were not subject to customs and immigration inspections -- heh -- and so having them come back empty was too much of a lost opportunity. Some enterprising soul decided that they should be carrying cocaine! So, the 1980's -- the years of the battles against the Sandinistas and other Communist-backed groups in Latin America -- also became the years of Miami Vice.

For an interesting read, check out Powderburns.

Regardless, during those same years, the Reagan Administration was determined to put a full-court press on the Soviet Union. The Democrats, aligned with supporters from the far left, had the reputation of being soft on Communism, and tried to frame the Cold War debate as one of "guns or butter", implying that the Soviet Union was not a threat, and implying the military was getting preference while the American people suffered. Reagan, of course, knew that the American economy was powerful, and was merely chained by regulations and taxes -- in particular, he knew that while the Soviet Union perhaps had to deal with a question of "guns or butter", the American economy could provide both.

With the Soviets fighting in Afghanistan, an opportunity presented itself to recall our own experience from Vietnam, and to return the favor. This required, however, getting funding for clandestine and covert operations from an unfriendly Congress.

A more practical solution was found by the guys on the ground in South Asia. By producing opiates, they could make money. The money could pay for the jihad against Moscow, and the opiates could be sold to the infidel enemy, making the Soviet Army less effective, and starting a drug problem in the USSR akin to the one that had been growing in the US during the 1960's and 1970's.

The trouble was, there's money in drugs; sewing an arm on here, adding in the wrong kind of brain there, the US intelligence agencies helped piece together a monster, and this business took on a life of its own.

The military in Guatemala and Haiti, to which the CIA provided covert support, were known to be involved in the trade of narcotics into Southern Florida. And as revealed in the Iran-Contra and Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) scandals, there was strong evidence that covert operations were funded through the laundering of drug money. "Dirty money" recycled through the banking system--often through an anonymous shell company-- became "covert money," used to finance various rebel groups and guerrilla movements including the Nicaraguan Contras and the Afghan Mujahadeen. According to a 1991 Time magazine report:

"Because the US wanted to supply the mujehadeen rebels in Afghanistan with stinger missiles and other military hardware it needed the full cooperation of Pakistan. By the mid-1980s, the CIA operation in Islamabad was one of the largest US intelligence stations in the World. 'If BCCI is such an embarrassment to the US that forthright investigations are not being pursued it has a lot to do with the blind eye the US turned to the heroin trafficking in Pakistan', said a US intelligence officer."[8]

No more need to beg the liberal Democrats in Congress for money to battle the godless Communist hordes -- problem solved.

America and Germany join hands

Since the early 1990s, Bonn and Washington have joined hands in establishing their respective spheres of influence in the Balkans. Their intelligence agencies have also collaborated. According to intelligence analyst John Whitley, covert support to the Kosovo rebel army was established as a joint endeavour between the CIA and Germany's Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND) (which previously played a key role in installing a right-wing nationalist government under Franjo Tudjman in Croatia).[9] The task to create and finance the KLA was initially given to Germany: "They used German uniforms, East German weapons and were financed, in part, with drug money".[10] According to Whitley, the CIA was subsequently instrumental in training and equipping the KLA in Albania.[11]

The covert activities of Germany's BND were consistent with Bonn's intent to expand its "Lebensraum" into the Balkans. Prior to the onset of the civil war in Bosnia, Germany and its Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher had actively supported secession; it had "forced the pace of international diplomacy" and pressured its Western allies to recognize Slovenia and Croatia. According to the Geopolitical Drug Watch, both Germany and the US favoured (although not officially) the formation of a "Greater Albania" encompassing Albania, Kosovo and parts of Macedonia.[12] According to Sean Gervasi, Germany was seeking a free hand among its allies "to pursue economic dominance in the whole of Mitteleuropa."[13]

Islamic fundamentalism in support of the KLA

Bonn and Washington's "hidden agenda" consisted in triggering nationalist liberation movements in Bosnia and Kosovo with the ultimate purpose of destabilising Yugoslavia. The latter objective was also carried out "by turning a blind eye" to the influx of mercenaries and financial support from Islamic fundamentalist organisations.[14]

America's reliance on Middle East oil has been seen for the handicap that it is since the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo -- and the south of the former USSR is known to be an oil-rich area, out of reach of the Arabs.

That oil can come to market in tankers crossing the Black Sea, but then there's the bottleneck in the Turkish Straits. Weather in the Turkish Straits isn't always conducive to moving a tanker through, and some day, the political climate might not be conducive, either.

A pipeline across the Balkan Peninsula would solve that problem, but bring with it another: to get to a deepwater port that can handle supertankers in bad weather, such a pipeline would need to cross Yugoslavia -- and Yugoslavia was dominated and administered mostly by the Serbs, traditional allies of Russia.

With the fall of the Soviet Union, the oil itself was now outside of Moscow's reach; now what was needed was to make sure the pipeline carrying it across the Balkans was, too. By destabilizing Yugoslavia, new countries could be created where once there were republics of Yugoslavia -- and those countries would be beholden to the West who helped create them.

By the way -- to get to Western markets, that oil from the Caspian Basin also had cross the Caucasus, running near places like Chechnya. Are you beginning to get the picture?

Mercenaries financed by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait had been fighting in Bosnia.[15] And the Bosnian pattern was replicated in Kosovo: Mujahadeen mercenaries from various Islamic countries are reported to be fighting alongside the KLA in Kosovo. German, Turkish and Afghan instructors were reported to be training the KLA in guerrilla and diversion tactics.[16]

And so, in a move that would be of long-term strategic damage to the oil-producing Persian Gulf, the Arab oil-producing nations there, especially Saudi Arabia, helped fund the jihad in the Balkans against the infidel Serbs, thus opening up the route to move non-Arab oil to the West.

What were the Saudis thinking?

Did they get duped?

Or, did they run some calculations of their own, and come up with the answer that the pipelines would transit new, radical Muslim nations, full of jihadis and Wahhabi mosques producing more jihadis -- nations with ties to Riyadh at least as strong as any dependence on the infidel West?

Perhaps cooperation with one infidel enemy was seen as a way to destroy another -- and perhaps it was also seen as good for Muslims.

According to a Deutsche Press-Agentur report, financial support from Islamic countries to the KLA had been channelled through the former Albanian chief of the National Information Service (NIS), Bashkim Gazidede.[17] "Gazidede, reportedly a devout Moslem who fled Albania in March of last year [1997], is presently [1998] being investigated for his contacts with Islamic terrorist organizations."[18]

To properly fund a terrorist jihad, it takes money -- and that money must not be traceable back to the sheikhs (or others) who fund the terror.

But, what was that trick we learned? Something about using drugs -- drug consumption destroys the infidel at home, and the profits fund the military jihad against the infidel.

As you read the statistics in this next paragraph, recall that the article is from 1999:

The supply route for arming KLA "freedom fighters" are the rugged mountainous borders of Albania with Kosovo and Macedonia. Albania is also a key point of transit of the Balkans drug route which supplies Western Europe with grade four heroin. Seventy-five percent of the heroin entering Western Europe is from Turkey. And a large part of drug shipments originating in Turkey transits through the Balkans. According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), "it is estimated that 4-6 metric tons of heroin leave each month from Turkey having [through the Balkans] as destination Western Europe."[19] A recent intelligence report by Germany's Federal Criminal Agency suggests that: "Ethnic Albanians are now the most prominent group in the distribution of heroin in Western consumer countries."[20]

So, we have the mix: oil, heroin and Arab-Afghan mujahideen.

And, this brings us to an urgent need to launder money.

One main target on 9/11 was the World Trade Center.

Why was it that two buildings, both of which were overengineered to withstand the impact of an airliner full of jet fuel, collapsed in the same day, supposedly due to impact of airliners full of jet fuel?

Why was it that a third building, which was not hit by an aircraft, collapsed in the same complex later that day?

Does it have any relation to reports from the Sibel Edmonds case that plans for US skyscrapers had gone to the Middle East in the months before the attacks?

Why the World Trade Center?

Why were stock trades whizzing through the WTC's computers, even during the attack -- at five to ten times the normal volume?

Could it have anything to do with the need to launder money and cover one's tracks?

Ah, but we get ahead of ourselves... stay tuned for Part 3!