Document Says Bin Laden Visited Yugoslavia to Buy Weapons

[Harconen]

Document Says Bin Laden Visited Yugoslavia to Buy Weapons

Belgrade |

NEW: 11 January 2010

| Bojana Barlovac
http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/24898/

The world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden, unsuccessfully tried to buy weapons from the Yugoslav People's Army, JNA, in Belgrade in 1986, Croatian daily newspaper Vecernji List reports.

According to the daily, a secret document from the former Yugoslavia labelled with "Military Secret" and "Top Secret" reveals that the then 29-year-old Bin Laden was in Zagreb and Belgrade in 1986.

The leader of Al Qaeda arrived in Yugoslavia, because he “showed interest in buying a wide range of modern weapons, which would make it easier to resist the powerful Soviet force in Afghanistan,” the document reads.

Bin Laden reportedly offered one hundred million dollars in cash, but the proposal was denied due to the Yugoslav position of selling certain weapons only to states, not to organisations or movements.


Osama bin Laden visited Croatia, report

January 11, 2010 – 6:41 am
http://serbianna.com/blogs/bozinovich/?p=275


Osama bin Laden stayed in Croatia for days in the 1980s says Croatian daily newspaper Vecernji.hr.

The then 29-year old Osama was part of a 3-men delegation that came to Zagreb, Croatia, seeking to purchase weapons for the Afghan fighters.

Vecernji.hr cites a document by the Yugoslav Federal Department of Commerce from 1986 that was a classified document marked as a “military secret”.

The document’s Notes section describes that Osama bin Laden arrived in Croatia on October 25, 1986 along with Fathi Muhammed Ali, Afghan mujahedeen representative, Osman Kaldirim, an ethnic Turk from the US. The men were accompanied by Yugoslav-born Zorica Ridjesic and Milica Karadzoglu. Karadzoglu was married to a Turkish national. Aleksandar Markovic, representative of the Yugoslav export company Genex, was also part of the crowd.

Yugoslav military Colonel Stankovic ordered that the men be first debriefed. Lieutenant Colonel’s Jovanovic and Jurisic interrogated the three visitors.

Vecernji.hr says that Osama and the men said that they had $100 million to spend and that besides conventional weapons they also wanted to buy poison.

The report says that Osama had talks with bankers at the Zagreb-office of Beobanka. It is unclear how much money he deposited there but the report says that the negotiations after the deposit quickened up.

Vecernji.hr says that Osama then flew to Belgrade where he asked the Yugoslav communist politicians for help in the fight against the Russians; that Osama visited the weapons factory in Capljina and wanted to buy poison that was produced in the Potoci factory near Mostar.

After reviewing his requests, the communists decided not to sell him the poison because Yugoslavia had a policy that poison is sold only to governments.

Vecernji reminds that in 1992 bin Laden created a “humanitarian” organization in Croatia, Al-Kifah, located in the street Krizni Put 105 and that the organization was ran by the Algerian national Kamr Ad Din Khirbani who lived in Vila Velebit 5, Zagreb.

Khirbani then moved to Bosnia, then Albania and became the chief suspect in the attack on the US assets in Rome.

[EvadingGrid]

MEGA BUMP

[amazon]

wow !

[EvadingGrid]

Accompanied by an AMERICAN
"Osman Kaldirim, an ethnic Turk from the US"


100 MILLION IN CASH
"Bin Laden reportedly offered one hundred million dollars in cash"


Anyone smell CIA ?

[EvadingGrid]

Vecernji.hr says that Osama and the men said that they had $100 million to spend and that besides conventional weapons they also wanted to buy poison.

[amazon]

poison is sold only to governments.



Well,
guess that makes their refusal ethical !

               

[EvadingGrid]

There is more to come from this story....

[kushfiend]

are you f**king kidding me???

OBL, the CIA's ultimate trump card, going weapons shopping in Yugoslavia like it's a damn Sam's Club?  Holy f**king shit the implications of this are just blowing my mind.

HOW DO THEY KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH THIS?

I see the CIA, with the gun, in the conservatory, standing over prof. plumb's bloody body, laughing maniacally because the CIA knows that it only answers to itself.

[EvadingGrid]

are you f**king kidding me???

Osama Bin Laden, the CIA's ultimate trump card, going weapons shopping in Yugoslavia like it's a damn Sam's Club?  Holy f**king shit the implications of this are just blowing my mind.

HOW DO THEY KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH THIS?

I see the CIA, with the gun, in the conservatory, standing over prof. plumb's bloody body, laughing maniacally because the CIA knows that it only answers to itself.

Grizzly there is a lot more to this story to come out yet . . .

[amazon]

Grizzley


That is a GREAT reply!!!!

I am still laughing my butt off  !!!!!!


                

[Harconen]

Sorry for poor google translation

Shocking discovery: Bin Laden bought weapons in Belgrade!

BEOGRAD  11. 01. 2010

PRESS
http://www.pressonline.rs/sr/vesti/vesti_dana/story/95546/%C5%A0okantno+otkri%C4%87e:+Bin+Laden+kupovao+oru%C5%BEje+u+Beogradu!.html

The leader of Al Qaeda tried to 1986th that the JNA buy weapons to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. Bin Laden arrived in Belgrade from Zagreb, during the negotiations on the table, took out $ 100 million in cash


Most wanted terrorists the world and the Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden tried in 1986. in Belgrade to buy weapons for the war against Russia (former USSR) in Afghanistan! Bin Laden arrived in Belgrade from Zagreb, where he previously negotiated the purchase of weapons in Beobanke branch, said in Zagreb, "Evening Gazette." Newspaper states that Bin Laden on the table, pulled out a bag with $ 100 million in cash, which is "accelerate talks" .

"Evening" refers to a document SDPR the 1986th year in which the designation "military secret" and "strictly confidential" describes in detail room then 29-year-old Osama bin Laden in the former Yugoslavia. The document "talks with Imprint Aliens "is that the 25th June 1986th SDPR rooms in a three foreigners arrived unannounced, accompanied by Jugoslovenki Zorica Riđešić and Milica Karadžoglu and representatives of "Genex" Aleksandra Markovic.

Three foreigners were Fathi Mohamed Ali - official resistance in Afghanistan, Osman Kaldir - Turkish citizen who lived in the U.S., and Osama bin Laden - a citizen of Saudi Arabia. As a reason for their visit, said "interest in purchasing a wider range of modern weapons, which would be easier to oppose the mighty Soviet force in Afghanistan."

Al Qaeda cells in Zagreb

"Evening Gazette" that "offered one hundred million dollars in cash to speed up negotiations", and Bin Laden just days after talks in Zagreb branch Beobanke went to Belgrade, where he sought support from the army to fight the Soviets. Then the leader of Al Qaeda was in Capljina, where he tried to purchase agreements and combat the poison!

List writes that the poison gas produced in the then JNA streams near Mostar, but adds, referring to claims by an army obaveštajca of the time, that the wish Bin Laden was not met because "the attitude of Yugoslavia was to World War I sell only states rather than organizations and movements.

It further states that bin Laden 1992nd years after the war in Afghanistan and the outbreak of war in BiH, in the street cross 105 in Zagreb, founded a humanitarian organization Al Kifah, whose head is appointed Hamrudina Hirbanija, a former Algerian pilot. Hirbani in Zagreb, held briefly, after which he went to Bosnia and then to Albania, to make it a few years later the CIA osumnjičila to attempt to attack the U.S. embassy in Rome.

Military analyst Aleksandar Radic said that the Croatian newspaper said that Bin Laden tried to buy weapons in Belgrade accurate, but argues that Yugoslavia is not sold him anything!

- It is true that Bin Laden was then Yugoslavia, but he was young then and was known as today. And came to Belgrade in order to buy weapons. And a direct recommendation of the Americans, but he left empty-handed - he says Radic.

Created by Americans

Retired army general Ninoslav Krstic said that it is very possible that Osama bin Laden came in the interest of the United States.

- In general I am not surprised that now it all comes to the surface. And Americans have made Bin Laden! I have no concrete information about the purchase, but it is very possible that he stayed here as an American man - said Krstic.

Professor, Faculty of Security Dragišić Zoran said that the Croatian newspaper said "very realistic, given the foreign policy of the then SRFJ.

- How to talk, but I can not say whether it was true until I see concrete evidence. However, it is very realistic, because we are then led foreign policy that we dodvoravali Americans. Otherwise, the arrival of Bin Laden could be that she knew very few people, and then the front end before all men of military service security and JNA - Dragišić explains.

Mid-eighties was the head of VBA General Jere Grubesic, Federal Secretary for National Defense, General Branko Mamula, a Yugoslav Army Chief of General HQ Stevan Mirkovic.


Vasiljevic: I knew that we produced toxins

Retired Army Gen. Aleksandar Vasiljevic, who in 1986. Kontraobaveštajnog was head of security department in the Directorate, a suspected leader of Al Qaeda in general stayed in this area.
- I do not know whether bin Laden came here, but we all wonder. "Evening newspaper claims that he is in the streams near Mostar refused to arrange the purchase battlefield toxins? Given the function where I was, I had to know if there are products poison gas! And I did not have that information. I only that even before the Second World War in a village in Serbia, there Zekićevo chemical factory, but it was destroyed during the war. So I'm not quite sure that he stayed in this area - the story Vasiljevic.

[EvadingGrid]

It is true that Bin Laden was then Yugoslavia, but he was young then and was known as today. And came to Belgrade in order to buy weapons. And a direct recommendation of the Americans,

[kushfiend]

Grizzley


That is a GREAT reply!!!!

I am still laughing my butt off  !!!!!!


                

ha thx these f**kboys really know how to piss me off

[EvadingGrid]

We've BEEN at war since the early 1990s - a war started in the Balkans, and a war
in which Bill Clinton made America an ally of Osama bin Laden and the
terrorists.

[Harconen]

Blast from the past...

The War Began When Clinton Sided with Osama bin Laden

Bill Richer
Tue, 18 Sep 2001 15:07:29 -0700
http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg77440.html

The War Began When Clinton Sided with Osama bin Laden
Are we Finally Switching Sides with George W. Bush as Commander-in-Chief?
By Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com)

September 14, 2001

President George W. Bush tells us we are "at War" against terrorism. We've
BEEN at war since the early 1990s - a war started in the Balkans, and a war
in which Bill Clinton made America an ally of Osama bin Laden and the
terrorists. On March 23, 1999, a day before Clinton began a 79-day bombing
attack on the Serbs, talk show host Michael Reagan said:


"If you listen to my show a lot you'll remember that last week Col. David
Hackworth said that many of the weapons being bought and paid for by the
Kosovo Liberation Army are being bought and paid for by drugs,. Mary Mostert,
my editor, who has developed sources in Europe, verified the drug connection.
She sent me the Prague Post article reporting that one of the 'drug gangs' of
the Kosovo Albanian 'Kosovo Liberation Army,' which supplies up to 90% of the
illegal heroin in Scandinavia, had been arrested. (See:
http://www.reagan.com/HotTopics.main/HotMike/document-3.22.1999.12.html)
"It seems when there's drugs the President of the United States somehow
always comes down on the side of the drug lords. Just as Hollywood always
seems to come down on the side of Communists and uplifts them, the President
always uplifts those who are dealing with drugs.

"He says there's a war on drugs? Maybe there is a war that is going to begin
this week that's going to be paid for by drugs and we're going to be part of
it."

It does. I've been writing about Osama bin Laden for years, especially his
strange relationship with Bill Clinton. On August 24, 1998, I quoted from a
report in December 1993,Independent News' , written by journalist Robert Fisk
who met and interviewed Osama bin Laden in Almatig, Sudan. . He noted that
during "the last great proxy battle of the Cold War was between the invading
Russians and the Afghans." Bin Laden , son of a wealthy Saudi road
contractor, went to Afghanistan to fight the Russians. He was dubbed "an Arab
fighter" or a "freedom fighter." Much of his present headquarters, in fact,
were reportedly financed by and helped built by our very own CIA through we
he obtained training and even the US made stinger missiles with which he shot
down Russian aircraft.

I wrote in the August 24, 1998 article
((http://www.bannerofliberty.com/OS8-98MQC/8-24-1998.1.html) that Fist
believed the:


"contribution to the mujahedin - and the indirect result of his training and
assistance - may turn out to be a turning- point in the recent history of
militant fundamentalism."
Within months Bin Laden was sending Arab fighters - Egyptians, Algerians,
Lebanese, Kuwaitis, Turks and Tunisians - into Afghanistan; ''not hundreds
but thousands,'' he said. He supported them with weapons and his own
construction equipment. ..."We beat the Soviet Union. The Russians fled.''
Bin Laden claimed.

...A small number of mujahedin have gone to fight in Bosnia-Herzegovina but
the Croats won't allow the mujahedin in through Croatia as the Pakistanis did
with Afghanistan.''

That prompted me to look up a story I wrote on September 23, 1996 entitled
"Clinton OK'ed Terrorist Financed Weapons to Bosnia Muslims Plus Free Weapons
and 'Police Training' From US
Taxpayers"(http://www.reagan.com/HotTopics.main/HotMike/document-9.23.1996.3.h

tml) in which I quoted a report to the Washington Post which said, "According
to a senior Western Diplomat in the area, the Clinton administration knew of
the activities of a so-called Relief Agency which was, in fact, funneling
weapons and money into Bosnia to prop up the Izetebegovic Muslim government
in Sarajevo In effect Clinton lifted the Arms Embargo SOLELY for shipments of
arms and personnel from Iran to the Bosnian Muslims. The Administration's
action was 'in large part because of the administration's sympathy for the
Muslim government' the Post said, 'and the Third World Relief Agency and
ambivalence about maintaining the arms embargo." We were told [by Washington]
to watch them but not interfere,' the diplomat said.

I pointed out in that article:


"Throughout most of the Clinton Administration, beginning in 1993, Clinton
not only knew of the arms smuggling scheme, he appears to have sanctioned it
right up to the Dayton Peace Accord negotiations, in which he pretended a
"neutral" role and promised additional weaponry free from America.
"Elfatih Hassanein organized the 'Third World Relief Agency' in 1987,
evidently as a cover for his efforts to import Muslim fundamentalism into
Yugoslavia. In a 1994 interview with Gazi Husrev Beg, a magazine focusing on
Islamic affairs, Hassanein called for the creation of an Islamic state in
Bosnia. 'Bosnia, at the end, must be Muslim Bosnia, otherwise, everything has
lost its sense and this was for nothing.' When Bosnia broke away from
Yugoslavia, the Muslims were not a majority in the province of
Bosnia-Herzegovina. Hassanein and other Muslim fundamentalists worked to
awaken a "religious sense among Bosnia's secular Muslims." In 1992 Muslims
were the minority - Christians, either Catholic Croatians or Eastern Orthodox
Serbs, were the majority in the Bosnia-Herzegovina. Muslim fundamentalism was
not part of the scene in Bosnia until recently.

The Clinton Administration allowing the arming of the Muslims enabled them to
drive out thousands of Serbs, insuring the election of Izetbegovic and a
Muslim Bosnia. ...In September 1995, German investigators -- and agents from
Austria's anti-terrorist task force -- raided the headquarters of Third World
Relief Agency seizing enough documents to fill three minivans" according to
the Post article. The records showed that over the years it had moved
hundreds of millions of dollars through its account at First Austrian Bank.
Bank officials noted that $80 million flowed into the agency's account in
1992; $231 million in 1993; and $39 million in 1994 and 1995. The chief of a
Western intelligence agency estimated that more than half of the $350 million
was used to buy weapons for the Bosnian Muslims, and to bribe Croatian
officials to allow the weapons to cross their country. "Money was also
smuggled into Sarajevo on flights of the office of the U.N. High Commissioner
for Refugees; Bosnian government officials used the money to buy weapons from
both Serb and Croat middlemen who operated inside Bosnia" one official said.
Apparently in 1995 the Relief Agency was able to "wind down" its work,
because of the "direct weapons pipeline between Iran and Bosnia that passed
through Croatia starting in May 1995. With the approval of the Clinton
administration in April 1995, that pipeline opened directly through the UN
Arms Embargo when the Croatian government asked the United States if it
opposed such a link. The Clinton Administration declined to respond, later
defending the action by saying that "the US Congress wanted to lift the Arms
Embargo." However, Congressional leaders knew none of this.

Evidently, it appears, the supplier of weapons to the Bosnia Muslims was none
other than Osama Bin Laden. The result of arming the Muslims of Bosnia was
the introduction into Europe of his brand of fundamentalism. Once before Bill
Clinton basically sided with America's enemies in North Vietnam while other
young men were risking their lives fighting North Vietnam. There is every
reason to believe that Clinton, either through deliberate inaction in foreign
affairs, or by looking the other way, enabled Bin Laden to build his army of
terrorists.

Does this have anything to do with the killing of thousands of American in
the terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center with one of our own jet-fuel
laden airliners? It does. Guess who helped train the Kosovo Liberation Army,
a group that had been a known terrorist organization for years by governments
throughout the world, including the U.S. State Department? It does. Sadly,
while American taxpayers were engrossed in Clinton's sex life, while the U.S.
media was intent on convincing us that Clinton's lying and bizarre sex life
was no big deal, billions of dollars were spent to prop up radical, even
anti-American, terrorists and drug lords all over the world. It has had a
particularly devastating effect in the Balkans.

You might remember, as you think and pray about the thousands of dead in
those four American airplanes, in the World Trade Center and in the Pentagon,
how the Serbs must have felt, and still feel, when we turned our backs on
them. It was the Serbs, fighting the Nazis in their own country and all
around them (the Croatians, Albanians) who literally saved Europe at the loss
of more than 50% of their men and boys aged 17-50 during World War II. By
their valiant battles, they delayed Hitler's invasion of Russia, causing the
German Army to be bogged down in the bitter winter. They also saved the lives
of more than 500 American pilots who were shot down over Yugoslavia in World
War II.

And what was their reward? Bill Clinton, without any support from Congress or
the UN, bombed them for 79 days on to enable the Kosovo Liberation Army, a
terrorist drug dealing organization allied with Osama bin Laden to drive all
Serbs, Macedonians, Montenegrins and Jews out of Kosovo - while it is
occupied by NATO!

During the bombing of Yugoslavia, Jerry Seper of the Washington Times
reported again the Osama bin Laden connection with the KLA. He wrote, on May
4, 1999:


"Some members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which has financed its war
effort through the sale of heroin, were trained in terrorist camps run by
international fugitive Osama bin Laden -- who is wanted in the 1998 bombing
of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 persons, including 12
Americans.
The KLA members, embraced by the Clinton administration in NATO's 41-day
bombing campaign to bring Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to the
bargaining table, were trained in secret camps in Afghanistan,
Bosnia-Herzegovina and elsewhere, according to newly obtained intelligence
reports. The reports also show that the KLA has enlisted Islamic terrorists
-- members of the Mujahideen --as soldiers in its ongoing conflict against
Serbia, and that many already have been smuggled into Kosovo to join the
fight.

Known to its countrymen as the Ushtria Clirimatare e Kosoves, the KLA has as
many as 30,000 members, a number reportedly on the rise as a result of NATO's
continuing bombing campaign. The group's leadership, including Agim Ceku, a
former Croatian army brigadier general, has rapidly become a political and
military force in the Balkans. The intelligence reports document what is
described as a "link" between bin Laden, the fugitive Saudi including a
common staging area in Tropoje, Albania, a center for Islamic terrorists.

The reports said bin Laden's organization, known as al-Qaeda, has both
trained and financially supported the KLA. Many border crossings into Kosovo
by "foreign fighters" also have been documented and include veterans of the
militant group Islamic Jihad from Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan. Many of
the crossings originated in neighboring Albania and, according to the
reports, included parties of up to 50 men.

While Clinton staged token attacks on Osama Bin Laden's Afghanistan camp,
knowing full well he wasn't in the camp, and on a pharmaceutical factory in
the Sudan, he bombed our long-time Serb allies in Yugoslavia, who were
fighting the kind of terrorism we have just experienced in New York and
Washington, for 79 days, literally destroying the nation.

Now that the American public has been jolted awake by the slaughter at the
World Trade Center, hopefully they will begin to identify the problems we
really face in this nation. We have knowingly chosen during the Clinton years
a leader we know was a liar and adulterer. Why did we believe him when he
claimed the Serbs were committing genocide and had killed "100,000
Albanians?" We knew he was a liar. In the two years since the end of the
bombing, forensic experts from many nations have reported the death of a few
hundred Albanians at the hands of the Serbs - and some of those were known
KLA terrorists.

I believe we have a very different kind of leader in George W. Bush. He has
chosen a suburb group of people to assist him. Colin Powell, and others in
his cabinet are some of the best people in America. Democrats in Congress are
blocking others he nominated. He needs a full staff to begin to turn this
great nation back to a moral course. Write your members of Congress and
demand action now in active support of George W. Bush.

We are at war. And the war is complicated by the fact that we, like the
Russians in World War II, started out on the wrong side. . The war did not
start with this week's terrorism. It began, like World War I and World War
II, in the Balkans when President Bill Clinton chose to use America's Air
Force to help a terrorist drug cartel called the Kosovo Liberation Army take
control of a large chunk of Europe.




*COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107,
any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use
without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest
in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational
purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ]

Want to be on our lists?  Write at [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a menu of our lists!

<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please!  These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.

Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
 <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>

http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
 <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A>
========================================================================

[EvadingGrid]

"Some members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which has financed its war
effort through the sale of heroin, were trained in terrorist camps run by
international fugitive Osama bin Laden "

[EvadingGrid]

I hope the Infowars News team pick up on this story.

[Harconen]

Blast from the past...

Bin Laden, Iran,
and the KLA

How Islamic Terrorism Took Root in Albania

by Christopher Deliso
September 19, 2001
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/deliso5.html

A JARRING PROPHESY

Observers of NATO’s war on behalf of the Albanians in Kosovo, and the more recent American duplicity in Macedonia, have been fearful of the potential backlash that would come were the US to desert its bastard offspring, the KLA/NLA. All the way back in March 2001, the following disturbing prediction was made:

"When we throw in the possibility that various cells of Osama Bin Laden’s terrorist international are operating in this part of the world, the process of retribution against American assets will increase if America moves against the Greater Albania project."

This remarkable prophesy may soon be tested, in the aftermath of 11 September. Will the US, as Bush has warned, "make no distinction between the terrorists and those who harbor them"? Indeed, if Bush does strike against Bin Laden’s entire network, what will become of the Albanians?
BIN LADEN AND THE US – TOGETHER AT LAST IN ALBANIA

The fact that the CIA armed Bin Laden to fight the Soviets, with the help of Pakistan and the Afghan drug trade, is old news, and makes for especially bitter reading now. For years, the Albanian operations of Bin Laden and other radical Muslim terrorists have also been widely reported. In this article I attempt to trace some of the major points in this huge and still widely unknown movement, from the events of today back as far as 1992, when the Islamic reawakening in Albania enhanced conditions for widespread terrorism.

One of the only good results of the bombing of Serbia was an increased awareness of Islamic terrorism in the Balkans. Albania was soon implicated. On 4 May 1999, the Washington Times reported, citing new reports from US intelligence and Jane’s Defense Review, that the town of Tropoje, Albania was a"common staging area" for Bin Laden’s and the KLA’s forces, and thus "a center for Islamic terrorists." US intelligence also acknowledged that Bin Ladin’s al-Qaeda had "both trained and financially supported" the Albanians, and that the Kosovo border had been infiltrated by Bosnian, Chechen and Afghan mujaheedin, in "…crossings (which) originated in neighboring Albania and, according to the reports, included parties of up to 50 men." The Jane’s report added that "…documents found last year on the body of a KLA member showed that he had escorted several volunteers into Kosovo, including more than a dozen Saudi Arabians. Each volunteer carried a passport identifying him as a Macedonian Albanian."

A combination of chaos and poverty in Albania paved the way for Bin Laden to move in. The Times of London quoted Fatos Klosi, the head of the Albanian intelligence service, who said that bin Laden sent terrorists to Kosovo. Using the front of funding a "humanitarian agency," bin Laden muscled into Albania as far back as 1994.

The Times report gets even better:

"Klosi said he believed terrorists had already infiltrated other parts of Europe from bases in Albania. Interpol believes more than 100,000 blank Albanian passports were stolen in riots last year, providing ample opportunity for terrorists to acquire false papers."

A short time before this, a French national on trial for murder in Albania claimed to have been a member of bin Laden’s Albania cell, and had come "to recruit and arm fighters for Kosovo."

The general anarchy and upheaval in Albania over the past decade has made it an easy target for wealthy Islamic terrorists: weapons can be acquired with ease; high unemployment makes for high recruitment; and all assistance, whether economic, military or "humanitarian," is gladly accepted.

THE "HUMANITARIAN ORGANIZATION" FRONT

Bin Laden’s kind offer of "humanitarian help" in 1994 has been used repeatedly ever since to fund terrorism in Albania. Many terrorists have posed as "humanitarian workers" since. Secret KLA training camps, which the CIA and SAS also used, were created in Northern Albania by Iran and other countries "using Islamic educational institutions and projects for the development of rural communities as a front." Back in 1999, "a Saudi government audit acquired by US intelligence showed that 5 of Saudi Arabia’s top business executives ordered the National Commercial Bank (NCB), the kingdom’s largest, to transfer personal funds along with $3 million diverted from a Saudi pension fund to New York and London banks. The money was diverted into the accounts of Islamic charities, including Islamic Relief and Blessed Relief, that serve as fronts for Bin Laden."
AN OFFER THEY COULDN'T REFUSE

Mighty generous of the Saudi executives, don’t you think? The actual truth of this incident tells another story, and one that anti-Arab Americans should remember: these guys are just as afraid of bin Laden as we are.

It is well-known that bin Laden has a personal vendetta against the Saudi government, which he views as corrupt and unabashedly pro-Western. Over the past few years, he has built his economic base not only through contributions from rabid fanatics, but by "collecting" from unwilling businessmen representative of the hated Saudi regime. In this practice, Bin Laden has become the terrorists' Godfather – extorting from wealthy Arab businessmen. In the above "donation," for example, "intelligence sources say the businessmen, who are worth more than $5 billion, were paying bin Laden ‘protection money’ to stave off attacks on their businesses in Saudi Arabia."

Apparently, bin Laden tried to "collect" in a similar way from Albania in late 1999, when he made an unsuccessful request for asylum. This report, of 17 November, 1999, alleged that the attempt stemmed from the fact that bin Laden "had ‘bought’ several key politicians who have looked away from the activities of his supporters in Albania." The report went on to quote an Albanian newspaper, Koha Jone, which reported that a 42-year-old Jordanian businessman, resident in Albania since 1992, had just been arrested by the CIA in connection with bin Laden. Even if the Albanians could keep bin Laden out, they couldn’t control their protégé, as they had found out only a few months before, in July 1999, when US Secretary of Defense William Cohen canceled a trip to Albania, out of fear of assassination from bin Laden’s gang.
CHIEF AMONG ENEMIES

A long list of nationalities are represented in these and other documents relating to Albania and Kosovo: Islamic terrorists are cited as being from Egypt, Jordan, France, Bosnia, Macedonia, Saudi Arabia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Lybia, Pakistan… This indicates that bin Laden certainly couldn’t have run Albania by himself. He was aided all along by another old friend of the United States – Iran.
IRAN IN ALBANIA: IDEOLOGY AND TERRORISM

A report of 22 March, 1998 in the Times of London confirmed that bin Laden and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards had signed a pact (on 16 February in Teheran) consolidating their operations in Albania and Kosovo, hoping "to turn the region into their main base for Islamic armed action in Europe." This was the unfortunate but logical outcome of almost a decade of a growing Iranian presence in Albania, and a growing radicalization of the Albanian "freedom fighters."

At the 1994 summit of Islamic countries in Jeddah, an agreement had been reached to "help the ‘brothers in the Balkans’ with all available means, including military aid…. The Balkan peninsula was chosen as a beachhead for an organized penetration of Islam into Europe." Italy was used as the base for two failed attempts to assassinate the Pope in 1997 (first in Sarajevo, and later, in Bologna), attempts which the Iranian secret services allegedly masterminded, using "a suicide group of 18 terrorists from Turkey, Moslem Bosnia, and Iran."

One excellent article details the development of Iran’s terrorist cells in the Balkans. Command centers are found in both Muslim and non-Muslim countries. At the end of 1997, Iranian diplomat Mahmud Nurani, a Hezbollah veteran, was put in charge of the Rome cell involved in the attempts on John Paul II. At the same time, Kurban Ali Najeff Abadi, a close friend of Ayatollah Khameni, was installed in Albania. The consolidation of Iranian influence, in both legal and extralegal concerns, was expedited by Albania’s descent into anarchy in 1997 (during which, incidentally, mafia gangs and the nascent KLA robbed the Albanian military of much of its US-donated weaponry). Albania "desperately needed aid, regardless of its origin," and crime, kidnapping and smuggling were rampant. And so:

"Iranian intelligence circles deemed that Albania was ‘ripe’ and could accept the introduction of extremist Islamism which was to take place on two levels, according to Teheran’s plan. Publicly, Iran and its Islamic partners (were) to build a comprehensive financial support system ranging from banks and financial institutions to economy, and including numerous humanitarian organizations… secretly, a broad network was created to establish the intelligence-operative base destined to cover entire Europe, going primarily through the Balkans and Italy."
IRAN IN ALBANIA: THE ECONOMIC FRONT

The intersection of these two interests, economic control and the ideological control necessary for terrorism, came in 1998, at the meeting of the Iranian Supreme Economic Council. This meeting was dedicated exclusively to Albania, and it both reconfirmed and extended the policy of Islamic entrenchment developed since 1991. Meeting with influential figures such as Mohsen Nurbakan, head of the Iranian Central Bank, the Council suggested a "long-term plan" to promote Iran’s main objectives in Albania: the formation of a "commercial operative base" near the "heart of Europe"; the strengthening of a "strategic axis" between Sarajevo and Tirana; and the installation of a headquarters for Iranian intelligence operations on Greece, Austria, Italy, and Europe in general.

The implementation of Iran’s plan has brought Albania into the fold, and made it a staging post for Islamic terrorism in Europe. Financial dependence on Arab banks represents "the exclusive source of hard currency input into Albania." Iranian banks have in this way "penetrated all segments" of Albanian society and economy, "thus fully legalizing the Iranian presence in all spheres of financing."

That this was done for reasons beyond sound business strategy was clear, from the instructions of Mr. Nurbakan to the banks; they were "to invest in Albania, regardless of poor profit and business risk factors." In other words, the banking presence was a "legitimate face" for Iran’s intelligence: "officials of the Iranian financial intelligence are deployed in all Teheran’s institutions in Albania and cooperate closely with the operatives of the Intelligence Affairs Ministry regarding the financing of terrorist training camps, purchase of arms and military equipment, ‘money laundering’ and other activities."

Yet, one many wonder, how did ostensibly Europe-oriented Albania get involved so heavily with radical Islamic movements? The answer is that the process has been complex, and years in the making.
THE SECRET WAR: RESCUING THE ALBANIANS FROM GODLESSNESS

Albania is and has always been a very poor and backward country. Under Communism, there was little knowledge of the outside world, to the extent that the few Albanians who made it out without being shot by border guards would gaze in wonder at a city such as Athens, not knowing what planet they had stumbled upon. This unfortunate lack of worldliness has aided Islamic extremists. In the next two sections I make extensive use of an excellent study by M. Vickers and J. Pettifer, Albania: from Anarchy to a Balkan Identity (1997). This close study of the country’s recent development, while very sympathetic to the Albanian cause, details the steps which have brought Islamic terrorist organizations to Albania.

In 1967, Albania was declared the world’s first atheist state. When this prohibition was ended in 1990, Albania became an evangelical free-for-all. Although many religions were represented- including the Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others, the chief ones (in terms of Albania’s historical religious demographics) were the Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, and Muslims. The quick growth of Islam was due partly to its traditionally high profile (a relic of Ottoman days), and partly to a heavy influx of money from wealthy Arab countries. The Albanians, many of whom were too young to have experience of religion, were naïvely eager and curious, as was gleefully noted: "Islamic Relief reported that Albanian Muslims were like a dry sponge, ready to soak up anything given to them." (Page 104)
THE GOLDEN CARROT

The chaotic, impoverished state of Albania in the early 1990’s meant that it was easy pickings for deep-pocketed Islamic proselytizers. They were willing, at a time when the US and EU still were not, to invest in the country. Countries such as Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait wanted to bring in hardcore religion. The golden carrot they dangled was to bring Albania into the fold economically:

"In October 1992 a delegation from the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), headed by its chairman Ahmed Mohammed Ali, visited Tirana to lay the groundwork for Albania to join the bank. Ali told President Berisha that it was willing to invest in Albania and develop cooperation in all areas of the economy, including agriculture, education and transport… The delegation also discussed plans to build an institute to train teachers in Arabic and five schools; to dispatch a first contingent of Albanian students to undergo higher education in IDB member countries; and to promote book publishing." (Page 105)

Eight months prior to this, a delegation from the Turkish Islamic community had arrived in Tirana, to discuss with then-president Alia the role of religion in Albania, and the strengthening of religious cooperation between the two countries. In 1992, Albania and Turkey consolidated for the first time a defense pact which now involves millions of dollars of aid yearly from the latter to the former.

A month later, "a Kuwaiti delegation presented the beleaguered Alia administration with an ambitious investment plan and, in return for promises of economic aid, asked for permission to build several mosques. It was then that major construction of mosques began in earnest in Albania." (Page 102)
SPRING, 1992: A MASSIVE CONSTRUCTION OF MOSQUES BEGINS

By 1990, Turkish authorities had already started renovating mosques from the Ottoman period. The Kuwaiti initiative of 1992, which wedded religion with cash, continued this trend aggressively. It was the beginning of an ambitious new building program funded entirely from without. Mosques for the citizens of Tirana, Shkoder, Durres and Kavaja were promised by four sheiks of the Alislamic Aluok Foundation, based in the Netherlands, who visited Tirana on 23 April.

In addition to Middle Eastern governments, expatriate groups from Europe and the US funded the rebirth of Islam in Albania. At first, these new mosques were many more than demand required, and often strangely incongruous with their surroundings:

"In the Muslim village of Koplik – which is no more than a cluster of two-room cottages with small courtyards, joined by a series of dirt paths which in winter are churned into a sea of swirling mud by the hooves of cows and horses – an enormous newly-built yellow-painted mosque stands in the square, paid for by the Saudi Arabian government. Looking majestically out of place, it stands alone in an inhospitable, poor and miserable locality. The inside is richly carpeted and Korans are piled high along the walls. The opulence of Koplik’s mosque is in marked contrast to the church recently opened not far away in a Catholic village, which is in a bleak former agricultural building. It had no seats and the people had collected little piles of stones on which to sit, until in 1995 an Austrian-based charity furnished the church with benches." (Page 100)
RADICALIZING THE ALBANIANS

Another of the main purposes of the Islamic mission to Albania was to train and radicalize the young generation:

"As Albanian schools remained secular, children and young men were being sent to Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Malaysia, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Egypt to study Islamic theology. Islamic organisations helped to fund the expenses of those Albanians wishing to make the trip to Mecca; in 1991 around 170 Muslims from Albania went on the haji; in 1992 the figure was 300 and in 1993 over 400."

In this period, Albania became known as a place of refuge for those radical Muslims who were too hot for their own countries to handle, and "it was well-known that there were several fundamentalists on the run from Egyptian authorities who were living in Tirana." (Page 106)
EPILOGUE, OR, A BALKAN EPITAPH

There is a lot more to be discovered about the Albanian connection with bin Laden, and undoubtedly the next few weeks and months will turn up some dirt. How the US will act remains to be seen. It is unlikely that America will turn its back on its Albanian allies, as that would mean admitting yet another embarrassing mistake of foreign policy.

However, this should provoke some serious questions. First, how is it that the US Defense Secretary cannot visit a country that is one of his government's chief recipients of aid without fearing for his life from bin Laden’s terrorists? And why, even though his request was denied, did bin Laden even imagine that Albania would shelter him? These unsettling questions tell of a darker reality behind America’s prime "ally" in the Balkans.

Without exception, all of the other Balkan neighbors fear and hate Albania, with its American support and military aid, and its increasingly militant Islamic nature. Although it’s hard to gauge to what extent radical Islam has propelled the quest for a "Greater Albania," there is no question that religion is now a key factor in uniting the fractious Albanian groups – Kosovars, Gegs and Tosks – who never liked each other much before 1990, and who probably would never have developed strong feelings of unity, without the imposition of the kind of radical Islam championed by Osama bin Laden. It’s sad to say that the nurturing of radical Islam in the Balkans may prove to be America’s most lasting contribution to the region.

Christopher Deliso is a San Francisco-based travel writer and journalist with special interest in the Balkans. He received a BA in Philosophy and Greek (Hampshire College, 1997) and M.Phil with distinction in Byzantine Studies (Oxford University, 1999). From 1997-2000 Mr. Deliso lived and worked in Ireland, England, Turkey and Greece, and he spent one month in Macedonia in January, 2000. He is currently investigating media and governmental policies regarding the Macedonian crisis, and he publishes regularly on European travel destinations

[Harconen]

"Some members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which has financed its war
effort through the sale of heroin, were trained in terrorist camps run by

international fugitive Osama bin Laden "

Opium Connection Afghanistan - US


Summary of this page:

The Bush Administration gave the Taliban $43 million in May of this year for their destruction of Afghan opium crops in February. Drugs and terrorism go hand in hand. Afghanistan had been the world's largest producer of opium/heroin, claiming close to 70% of the world's total production. The amount of drug cash flowing into Wall Street and U.S. banks was estimated to be around $250-$300 billion a year. The history of the drug trade in Central Asia is intimately related to the CIA's covert operations. The U.S., directly or indirectly, helped to fund the WTC attacks. George Bush, Sr. was in charge of all U.S. intelligence and narcotics operations from 1981 through 1989. It was Bush (the elder) who directly nourished and nurtured bin Laden's evolution.

From African Mathaba Net http://mathaba.net/

...Continued from Stock movement as terrorist indicator through Promis Software

A final question: Why, in light of all the information we now know the government had about imminent attacks, did the Bush Administration gift the Taliban with $43 million in May of this year? The move by the White House, sorely criticized by columnist Robert Scheer in the May 22, 2001 Los Angeles Times, was an alleged reward by the U.S. for the Taliban's destruction of Afghan opium crops in February. Now, the U.S. government is rushing to mate with a Pakistani regime that sustains itself by, and derives liquid currency from, the drug trade. The result of that is that opium production will surely blossom again in Afghanistan - under U.S./CIA control. The obvious suggestion here is that the U.S., directly or indirectly, helped to fund the WTC attacks.

Osama bin Laden's Bush family Business Connections

Alliance With Pakistan Will Stimulate Drug Trade, Bring Revenues Under U.S. Control - Colombian Opium Production Will Soar

The Taliban's Biggest Economic Attack on the U.S. Came in February With The Destruction of Its Opium Crop

FTW - Money connections between Bush Republicans and Osama bin Laden go way back and the political and economic connections have remained unbroken for 20 years. And what appears to be a "new" alliance with Pakistan is merely a new manifestation of a decades-long partnership in the heroin trade.

Conveniently ignored in all of the press coverage since the tragic events of Sept. 11 is the fact that on May 17 Secretary of State Colin Powell announced a gift of $43 million to the Taliban as a purported reward for its eradication of Afghanistan's opium crop this February. That, in effect, made the U.S. the Taliban's largest financial benefactor according to syndicated columnist Robert Scheer writing in The Los Angeles times on May 22. But -- as we described in FTW's March 2001 issue -- the Taliban's destruction of that crop was apparently the single most important act of economic warfare against U.S. economic interests that the Taliban had ever committed. So why the gift?

Critics of the Gulf War well recall how, just prior to Sadam's invasion of Kuwait, President Bush (Sr.) dispatched Ambassador April Glaspie to visit Sadam with a letter and a "wink and a nod" telling the Iraqi leader that it was OK to invade his smaller neighbor. The May gift from Uncle Sam could well have been sending the same kind of message, along with necessary funds to complete the attacks. Drugs and terrorism go hand in hand.

Until February, Afghanistan had been the world's largest producer of opium/heroin, claiming close to 70% of the world's total production. That opium, consumed largely in Western Europe and smuggled through the Balkans, was a direct source of cash deposits in Western financial institutions and markets.

I specifically commented on this at an economic crisis conference in Moscow, Russia on March 7. In my formal statement to the Russian conference I said,

"Just before coming to this conference I read in the Associated Press, Agence France Press and other reliable sources that the Taliban has recently eradicated most of its 3000 ton opium crop in Afghanistan. If true, I view this as a form of economic warfare against Russia [and the U.S.] because it would drive opium production more into Southeast Asia and Colombia. However, I now suspect that this will result in a shift of opium production to the Caucasus under the Kurds which will see an increase in smuggling through Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. I should note that both Vice President Richard Cheney and the designated Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage are members of the US-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce. Such a move would have the effect of drastically shortening smuggling routes and costs into Western Europe and of bypassing unstable areas of the Balkans.

I have received additional reports that Uzbekistan is now awash in the opium poppy and, as in the US with the CIA, that Russian military and intelligence agencies facilitate the trade as a means of protecting access to hard currency. The point here is not that the US it totally evil or the only country doing these things. But the US is far and away the most advanced nation when it comes to the use of such methods to achieve superiority. As [Russian economist Michael] Khazin has noted, the US and Britain and Germany started the conflict in Kosovo in 1999 to stave off a collapse of western markets following the Asian collapse of 1997-8. Now Colombia is a last-ditch effort to protect the US markets and European opposition is jeopardizing that plan."

The Taliban's actions this year severed the ruling military junta in Pakistan from its primary source of foreign revenues and made bin Laden and the Taliban completely expendable in the eyes of the Pakistani government. It also cut off billions of dollars in revenues that had been previously laundered through western banks and Russian financial institutions connected to them.

Now as US military action will replace the Taliban government and fresh crops will be planted in Afghanistan, the slack in cash flow will assuredly be replaced by dramatically increased opium production in Colombia; the revenues from that effort being needed to maintain the revenue streams into Wall Street. Prior to the WTC attacks, credible sources, including the U.S. government, the IMF, Le Monde and the U.S. Senate placed the amount of drug cash flowing into Wall Street and U.S. banks at around $250-$300 billion a year.

In that context, the real history of Osama bin Laden, as America's useful terrorist-du-jour reveals a long and continuous history, interwoven with the drug trade and the Bush family, of supporting conflicts that have benefited U.S. military and economic interests.

bin Laden
There are direct historical links between Osama bin Laden's business interests and those of the Bush family. On September 15 I received the following message from FTW subscriber, Professor John Metzger of Michigan State University:

"We should revisit the history of BCCI, a bank used by the legendary Palestinian terrorist known as Abu Nidal. BCCI was closely tied to American and Pakistan intelligence. Its clients included the Afghan rebels, and the father of Osama bin Laden. The father of bin Laden named Houston investment broker James R. Bath as his business representative in Texas, right after George W. Bush's father became CIA director in 1976. By 1977, Bath invested $50,000 into junior's first business, Arbusto Energy, while Osama bin Laden would soon become a CIA asset. George W. Bush's FBI director Robert Mueller was part of the Justice Department's questionable investigation of BCCI. (On BCCI, the bin Ladens, and the Bushes, see the books, The Outlaw Bank, A Full Service Bank, and Fortunate Son)." Further details of the business and financial relationships between the Bush and bin Laden family are found in Peter Brewton's 1992 book The Mafia, CIA and George Bush. BCCI, incidentally, was founded by a Pakistani.

Economics Professor Michel Chossudovsky of the University of Ottawa has just completed a detailed history of bin Laden's career detailing his secret funding and logistical support to terrorist organizations beginning from his early CIA-supported roots in the 1980s as a "freedom fighter" through to the present day. Chossudovsky's compelling and well documented article, Who Is Osama Bin Laden? dated Sept 12, 2001 can be found on the Internet at: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.html.

Bin Laden's role has not just been as a practitioner of terrorist acts but as a trainer and supplier of terrorist organizations around the world. Included in bin Laden's coterie are terrorist groups linked to the Balkans, Albania, the KLA (a U.S. ally), and rebel groups leading the insurrection against Russia in Chechnya.

As FTW described in 1998, and as confirmed by Chossudovsky, the key to understanding U.S. support of bin Laden is to grasp that he has always been controlled by a cutout, the Pakistani government and its intelligence service the ISI. In this manner there has been virtually no direct contact between bin Laden and the CIA. This has served the dual purpose of maintaining his apparent "purity" with his followers and providing plausible deniability for the CIA. The whole underlying pretext for this relationship evaporated with the Taliban's destruction of the opium crop in February.

Chossudovsky writes:
"The history of the drug trade in Central Asia is intimately related to the CIA's covert operations. Prior to the Soviet-Afghan war, opium production in Afghanistan and Pakistan was directed to small regional markets. There was no local production of heroin. In this regard [Professor] Alfred McCoy's study confirms that within two years of the onslaught of the CIA operation in Afghanistan, 'the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands became the world's top heroin producer, supplying 60 per sent of the U.S. demand

"With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, a new surge in opium production has unfolded. (According to UN estimates, the production of opium in Afghanistan in 1998-99 -- coinciding with the build up of armed insurgencies in the former Soviet republics -- reached a record high of 4600 metric tons. Powerful business syndicates in the former Soviet Union allied with organized crime are competing for the strategic control over the heroin routes.

"The ISI's extensive intelligence military-network was not dismantled in the wake of the Cold War. The CIA continued to support the Islamic "jihad" out of Pakistan"

"The Golden Crescent drug trade was also being used to finance and equip the Bosnian Muslim Army (starting in the early 1990s) and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In the last few months there is evidence that Mujhideen mercenaries are fighting in the ranks of the KLA-NLA terrorists in their assaults into Macedonia

" With regard to Chechnya, the main rebel leaders Shamil Basayev and Al Khattab were trained and indoctrinated in CIA sponsored camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan In this regard, the involvement of Pakistan's ISI and its radical Islamic proxies are actually calling the shots in this war.

"Russia's main pipeline route transits through Chechnya and Dagestan. Despite Washington's perfunctory condemnation of Islamic terrorism, the indirect beneficiaries of the Chechen war are the Anglo-American oil conglomerates which are vying for control over oil resources and pipeline corridors out of the Caspian Sea basin."

The oil and drug connections were the subject of FTW's story, The Bush-Cheney drug Empire in October, 2000. That story is online at www.copvcia.com/stories/previous/bush-cheney-drugs.html. Both Bush and Cheney are oil men.

George Bush, Sr. was Vice President and, by virtue of executive Order 12333, in charge of all U.S. intelligence and narcotics operations from 1981 through 1989. As President from 1989 through 1993, he continued and expanded his control in these areas. Thus, it was Bush (the elder) who directly nourished and nurtured bin Laden's evolution.

From MATHABA.NET: http://mathaba.net/

[amazon]

Harconen,

Well done!

What a story!!!

       

[Harconen]

Harconen,

Well done!

What a story!!!

       

Thank you Amazon. There is more to come.

[Harconen]

Blast from the past...

Osama bin Laden's Bush family
Business Connections

Alliance With Pakistan Will Stimulate Drug Trade, Bring Revenues Under U.S. Control -
Colombian Opium Production Will Soar

The Taliban's Biggest Economic Attack on the U.S. Came in February With The Destruction
of Its Opium Crop

by

Michael C. Ruppert
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/09_18_01_bushbin.html

September 18, 2001

FTW - Money connections between Bush Republicans and Osama bin Laden go way back and the political and economic connections have remained unbroken for 20 years. And what appears to be a "new" alliance with Pakistan is merely a new manifestation of a decades-long partnership in the heroin trade.

Conveniently ignored in all of the press coverage since the tragic events of Sept. 11 is the fact that on May 17 Secretary of State Colin Powell announced a gift of $43 million to the Taliban as a purported reward for its eradication of Afghanistan's opium crop this February. That, in effect, made the U.S. the Taliban's largest financial benefactor according to syndicated columnist Robert Scheer writing in The Los Angeles times on May 22. But -- as we described in FTW's March 2001 issue -- the Taliban's destruction of that crop was apparently the single most important act of economic warfare against U.S. economic interests that the Taliban had ever committed. So why the gift?

Critics of the Gulf War well recall how, just prior to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, President Bush (Sr.) dispatched Ambassador April Glaspie to visit Saddam with a letter and a "wink and a nod" telling the Iraqi leader that it was OK to invade his smaller neighbor. The May gift from Uncle Sam could well have been sending the same kind of message, along with necessary funds to complete the attacks. Drugs and terrorism go hand in hand.

Until February, Afghanistan had been the world's largest producer of opium/heroin, claiming close to 70% of the world's total production. That opium, consumed largely in Western Europe and smuggled through the Balkans, was a direct source of cash deposits in Western financial institutions and markets.

I specifically commented on this at an economic crisis conference in Moscow, Russia on March 7. In my formal statement to the Russian conference I said,

"Just before coming to this conference I read in the Associated Press, Agence France Press and other reliable sources that the Taliban has recently eradicated most of its 3000 ton opium crop in Afghanistan. If true, I view this as a form of economic warfare against Russia [and the U.S.] because it would drive opium production more into Southeast Asia and Colombia. However, I now suspect that this will result in a shift of opium production to the Caucasus under the Kurds which will see an increase in smuggling through Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. I should note that both Vice President Richard Cheney and the designated Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage are members of the US-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce. Such a move would have the effect of drastically shortening smuggling routes and costs into Western Europe and of bypassing unstable areas of the Balkans.

I have received additional reports that Uzbekistan is now awash in the opium poppy and, as in the US with the CIA, that Russian military and intelligence agencies facilitate the trade as a means of protecting access to hard currency. The point here is not that the US it totally evil or the only country doing these things. But the US is far and away the most advanced nation when it comes to the use of such methods to achieve superiority. As [Russian economist Michael] Khazin has noted, the US and Britain and Germany started the conflict in Kosovo in 1999 to stave off a collapse of western markets following the Asian collapse of 1997-8. Now Colombia is a last-ditch effort to protect the US markets and European opposition is jeopardizing that plan."

The Taliban's actions this year severed the ruling military junta in Pakistan from its primary source of foreign revenues and made bin Laden and the Taliban completely expendable in the eyes of the Pakistani government. It also cut off billions of dollars in revenues that had been previously laundered through western banks and Russian financial institutions connected to them.

Now as US military action will replace the Taliban government and fresh crops will be planted in Afghanistan, the slack in cash flow will assuredly be replaced by dramatically increased opium production in Colombia; the revenues from that effort being needed to maintain the revenue streams into Wall Street. Prior to the WTC attacks, credible sources, including the U.S. government, the IMF, Le Monde and the U.S. Senate placed the amount of drug cash flowing into Wall Street and U.S. banks at around $250-$300 billion a year.

In that context, the real history of Osama bin Laden, as America's useful terrorist-du-jour reveals a long and continuous history, interwoven with the drug trade and the Bush family, of supporting conflicts that have benefited U.S. military and economic interests.

bin Laden

There are direct historical links between Osama bin Laden's business interests and those of the Bush family. On September 15 I received the following message from FTW subscriber, Professor John Metzger of Michigan State University:

"We should revisit the history of BCCI, a bank used by the legendary Palestinian terrorist known as Abu Nidal. BCCI was closely tied to American and Pakistan intelligence. Its clients included the Afghan rebels, and the brother of Osama bin Laden, Salem. Salem bin Laden named Houston investment broker James R. Bath as his business representative in Texas, right after George W. BushÕs father became CIA director in 1976. By 1977, Bath invested $50,000 into juniorÕs first business, Arbusto Energy, while Osama bin Laden would soon become a CIA asset. George W. BushÕs FBI director Robert Mueller was part of the Justice DepartmentÕs questionable investigation of BCCI. (On BCCI, the bin Ladens, and the Bushes, see the books, The Outlaw Bank, A Full Service Bank, and Fortunate Son)." Further details of the business and financial relationships between the Bush and bin Laden family are found in Peter Brewton's 1992 book The Mafia, CIA and George Bush. BCCI, incidentally, was founded by a Pakistani.

Economics Professor Michel Chossudovsky of the University of Ottawa has just completed a detailed history of bin Laden's career detailing his secret funding and logistical support to terrorist organizations beginning from his early CIA-supported roots in the 1980s as a "freedom fighter" through to the present day. Chossudovsky's compelling and well documented article, Who Is Osama Bin Laden? dated Sept 12, 2001 can be found on the Internet at: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.html.

Bin Laden's role has not just been as a practitioner of terrorist acts but as a trainer and supplier of terrorist organizations around the world. Included in bin Laden's coterie are terrorist groups linked to the Balkans, Albania, the KLA (a U.S. ally), and rebel groups leading the insurrection against Russia in Chechnya.

As FTW described in 1998, and as confirmed by Chossudovsky, the key to understanding U.S. support of bin Laden is to grasp that he has always been controlled by a cutout, the Pakistani government and its intelligence service the ISI. In this manner there has been virtually no direct contact between bin Laden and the CIA. This has served the dual purpose of maintaining his apparent "purity" with his followers and providing plausible deniability for the CIA. The whole underlying pretext for this relationship evaporated with the Taliban's destruction of the opium crop in February.

Chossudovsky writes:

"The history of the drug trade in Central Asia is intimately related to the CIA's covert operations. Prior to the Soviet-Afghan war, opium production in Afghanistan and Pakistan was directed to small regional markets. There was no local production of heroin. In this regard [Professor] Alfred McCoy's study confirms that within two years of the onslaught of the CIA operation in Afghanistan, 'the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands became the world's top heroin producer, supplying 60 per sent of the U.S. demandÉ

"With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, a new surge in opium production has unfolded. (According to UN estimates, the production of opium in Afghanistan in 1998-99 -- coinciding with the build up of armed insurgencies in the former Soviet republics -- reached a record high of 4600 metric tons. Powerful business syndicates in the former Soviet Union allied with organized crime are competing for the strategic control over the heroin routes.

"The ISI's extensive intelligence military-network was not dismantled in the wake of the Cold War. The CIA continued to support the Islamic "jihad" out of PakistanÉ"

"É The Golden Crescent drug trade was also being used to finance and equip the Bosnian Muslim Army (starting in the early 1990s) and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In the last few months there is evidence that Mujhideen mercenaries are fighting in the ranks of the KLA-NLA terrorists in their assaults into MacedoniaÉ

"É With regard to Chechnya, the main rebel leaders Shamil Basayev and Al Khattab were trained and indoctrinated in CIA sponsored camps in Afghanistan and PakistanÉ In this regard, the involvement of Pakistan's ISI and its radical Islamic proxies are actually calling the shots in this war.

"Russia's main pipeline route transits through Chechnya and Dagestan. Despite Washington's perfunctory condemnation of Islamic terrorism, the indirect beneficiaries of the Chechen war are the Anglo-American oil conglomerates which are vying for control over oil resources and pipeline corridors out of the Caspian Sea basin."

The oil and drug connections were the subject of FTW's story, The Bush-Cheney drug Empire in October, 2000. That story is online at http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/bush-cheney-drugs.html. Both Bush and Cheney are oil men.

George Bush, Sr. was Vice President and, by virtue of executive Order 12333, in charge of all U.S. intelligence and narcotics operations from 1981 through 1989. As President from 1989 through 1993, he continued and expanded his control in these areas. Thus, it was Bush (the elder) who directly nourished and nurtured bin Laden's evolution.

Dramatic Confirmation From Indian Government

The web site of the Indian Embassy in Washington contains dramatic confirmation for these positions. On September 4, 2000, B. Raman, Director of India's Institute for Topical Studies wrote an open letter to the U.S. Congress entitled Pakistan's Noriega's. That eight-page article exposed the depth of Pakistani government involvement in the drug trade. It may be viewed at:

www.indianembassy.org/int_media/
saag_september_04_2000.html.

The letter said, in part:

"For more than a decade, the people of India have been living in a state of half-war and half-peace due to the depredations of a large number of terrorists, outrageously called jehadists, who have been trained, armed and funded and infiltrated into the State of Jammu & Kashmir and other parts of India by Pakistan in order to make the people of India and its security forces bleed in the name of religion.

"More people belonging to different religions -- Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and others -- have been killed in India by these mercenary-terrorists sponsored by the State of Pakistan than by any other terrorist groups anywhere else in the worldÉ"

"ÉMany other States have suffered and have been suffering due to the depredations of terrorists, made in and exported from Pakistan and the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan -- [these include] Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Central Asian Republics, the Chechnya and Dagestan areas of Russia, the Xinjiang province of China, Bangladesh, the Arakan area of Burma and the southern Philippines..."

"After his [1993] removal, [as official head of Pakistani intelligence, trusted advisor to Pakistani leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf] Lt. Gen. Nasir traveled to Somalia, Chechnya, Dagestan, the Central Asian Republics, ÉChina, and the Southern Philippines as a preacherÉ and helped Islamic organizations, including the group which killed U.S. troopsÉ in Somalia."

"ÉIt was he, who, during his tenure as the DG [Director General] of the ISIÉ has entered into an agreement with the LTTE of Sri Lanka [which secured] LTTE's assistance in smuggling Afghanistan produced heroin in its ships to West Europe, the USA and CanadaÉ"

"ÉAnother reason for the ISI's helping the LTTE, despite its anti-Muslim policies, was to use it for smuggling heroin to West Europe, the U.S. and Canada. During Zia-ul-Haq's regime in the 1980s, heroin had become a major source of extra revenue not only for the State of Pakistan, especially the ISI and Pakistan's nuclear and missile establishment, but also to many senior officers of the Pakistan Army, including [Musharraf et al]É"

"The way Mr. Sharif before October 1999 and Gen. Musharraf since then have been using the heroin money to prevent the Pakistani economy from collapsing has not received due attention in the U.S. ..."

"If one goes purely by economic indicators, Pakistan's must be in as bad a shape as that of Russia, or even worse, since Russia has been in receipt of Western and IMF assistanceÉ"

"Where does the money come from? From the smuggling of heroin to West Europe, the U.S. and Canada. The U.S. Government might have stopped economic assistanceÉ from the taxpayers' money. But why should the Noriegas of Pakistan be worried when they get billions of dollars from the heroin sale in the U.S.?É "

Vice President Dick Cheney's recent comment that the CIA needs to get in bed with "unsavory characters" is a joke. That's a bed that the CIA has never left. And it's a marriage vow that President Bush has just reaffirmed for all the world to see.

[Harconen]

Blast from the past...

Al Qaeda's Balkan Links

Wall Street Journal Europe  | November 1, 2001 | Marcia Christoff Kurop
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/561291/posts

The Balkans' uncharacteristically silent exit from the world stage as the most prominent international hot spot of the last decade belies its status as a major recruiting and training center of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. By feeding off the region's impoverished republics and taking root in the unsettled diplomatic aftermath of the Bosnia and Kosovo conflicts, al Qaeda, along with Iranian Revolutionary Guard-sponsored terrorists, have burrowed their way into Europe's backyard.

For the past 10 years, the most senior leaders of al Qaeda have visited the Balkans, including bin Laden himself on three occasions between 1994 and 1996. The Egyptian surgeon turned terrorist leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri has operated terrorist training camps, weapons of mass destruction factories and money-laundering and drug-trading networks throughout Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Bosnia. This has gone on for a decade. Many recruits to the Balkan wars came originally from Chechnya, a jihad in which Al Qaeda has also played a part.

These activities have been exhaustively researched by Yossef Bodansky, the former director of the U.S. House of Representatives' Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare. The February testimony of an Islamist ringleader associated with the East Africa bombings have also helped throw light on these actions.

They have however been disguised under the cover of dozens of "humanitarian" agencies spread throughout Bosnia, Kosovo and Albania. Funding has come from now-defunct banks such as the Albanian-Arab Islamic Bank and from bin Laden's so-called Advisory and Reformation Committee. One of his largest Islamist front agencies, it was established in London in 1994.

Narco-Jihad Culture

The overnight rise of heroin trafficking through Kosovo -- now the most important Balkan route between Southeast Asia and Europe after Turkey -- helped also to fund terrorist activity directly associated with al Qaeda and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Opium poppies, which barely existed in the Balkans before 1995, have become the No. 1 drug cultivated in the Balkans after marijuana. Operatives of two al Qaeda-sponsored Islamist cells who were arrested in Bosnia on Oct. 23 were linked to the heroin trade, underscoring the narco-jihad culture of today's post-war Balkans.

These drug rings in turn form part of an estimated $8 billion a year Taliban annual income from global drug trafficking, predominantly in heroin. According to Mr. Bodansky, the terrorism expert, bin Laden administers much of that trade through Russian mafia groups for a commission of 10% to 15% -- or around $1 billion annually.

The settling of Afghan-trained mujahideen in the Balkans began around 1992, when recruits were brought into Bosnia by the ruling Islamic party of Bosnia, the Party of Democratic Action, from Chechnya, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, as well as Italy, Germany and Turkey. They were all given journalists' credentials to avoid explicit detection by the West. Others were married immediately to Bosnian Muslim women and incorporated into regular army ranks.

Intelligence services of the Nordic-Polish SFOR (previously IFOR) sector alerted the U.S. of their presence in 1992 while the number of mujahideen operating in Bosnia alone continued to grow from a few hundred to around 6,000 in 1995. Though the Clinton administration had been briefed extensively by the State Department in 1993 on the growing Islamist threat in former Yugoslavia, little was done to follow through.

The Bosnian Embassy in Vienna issued a passport to bin Laden in 1993, according to various reports in the Yugoslav press at the time. The reports add that bin Laden then visited a terrorist camp in Zenica, Bosnia in 1994. The Bosnian government denies all of this, but admits that some passport records have been lost. Around that time, bin Laden directed al Qaeda "senior commanders" to incorporate the Balkans into an complete southeastern approach to Europe, an area stretching from the Caucasus to Italy. Al Zawahiri, the Egyptian surgeon reputed to be the second in command of the entire al Qaeda network, headed up this southeastern frontline.

By 1994, major Balkan terrorist training camps included Zenica, and Malisevo and Mitrovica in Kosovo. Elaborate command-and-control centers were further established in Croatia, and Tetovo, Macedonia as well as around Sofia, Bulgaria, according to the U.S. Congress's task force on terrorism. In Albania, the main training camp included even the property of former Albanian premier Sali Berisha in Tropje, Albania, who was then very close to the Kosovo Liberation Army.

Not even stalwart NATO ally Turkey escaped the network. Areas beyond government control were also visited by bin Laden in 1996 according to London-based Jane's Intelligence Review. The government has been battling two terrorist groups: Jund al Islam, whose assassinated Syrian leader was one of bin Laden's closets confidantes, and the Kurdish PKK, whose leader, Abdullah Ocalan, merged his group's activities with those of Iran's Hezbollah in 1998.

Furthermore, as revealed in the February 2001 East Africa bombing trial testimony of Jamal al Fadl -- an al Qaeda operative in charge of weapons development in Sudan -- uranium used in "dirty bombs" that release lethal radioactive material, had been tested in 1994 by members of the Sudan-based Islamic National Front in the town of Hilat Koko, in Turkish-held northern Cyprus. Cyprus, both its north and southern sides, has also become a center for offshore money laundering by Arab banks fronting al Qaeda funds into the Balkans. The CIA puts al Qaeda's specific Balkan-directed funds -- those tied to the "humanitarian" agencies and local banks and not explicitly counting the significant drug profits added to that -- at around $500 million to $700 million between 1992 and 1998.

So where was the U.S. in all this? It was not until 1995 that the Clinton administration was forced to start pursuing the Islamist network in the Balkans. Not quite a month after the Dayton accords had been signed in November 1995, an influx of Iranian arms came into Bosnia with the apparent tacit approval of the administration, in violation of U.N. sanctions. While publicly pressing Bosnian President Alia Izebegovic to purge remaining Islamist elements, the administration was loath to confront Sarajevo and Tehran over their presence.

Instead, Islamist groups went quietly underground as the windfall of weapons landed in their hands. They later joined up with a new Islamist center in Sofia established as a kind of rear guard by the al Zawahiri. Following the Zagreb arrest and extradition of renowned Egyptian militant Faud Qassim, an al Zawahiri favorite, the Sofia-based militants planned the deployment in Bosnia of terrorists capable of planning and leading possible major terrorist strikes against U.S. and SFOR facilities, according to al Fadl's testimony to the House Task Force on Terrorism.

Islamist infiltration of the Kosovo Liberation Army advanced, meanwhile. Bin Laden is said to have visited Albania in 1996 and 1997, according to the murder-trial testimony of an Algerian-born French national, Claude Kader, himself an Afghanistan-trained mujahideen fronting at the Albanian-Arab Islamic Bank. He recruited some Albanians to fight with the KLA in Kosovo, according to the Paris-based Observatoire Geopolitique des Drogues.

Controversial Relationship

By early 1998 the U.S. had already entered into its controversial relationship with the KLA to help fight off Serbian oppression of that province. While in February the U.S. gave into KLA demands to remove it from the State Department's terrorism list, the gesture amounted to little. That summer the CIA and CIA-modernized Albanian intelligence (SHIK) were engaged in one of the largest seizures of Islamic Jihad cells operating in Kosovo.

Fearing terrorist reprisal from al Qaeda, the U.S. temporarily closed its embassy in Tirana and a trip to Albania by then Defense Secretary William Cohen was canceled out of fear of an assassination attempt. Meanwhile, Albanian separatism in Kosovo and Metohija was formally characterized as a "jihad" in October 1998 at an annual international Islamic conference in Pakistan.

Nonetheless, the 25,000 strong KLA continued to receive official NATO/U.S. arms and training support and, at the talks in Rambouillet, France, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright shook hands with "freedom fighter" Hashim Thaci, a KLA leader. As this was taking place, Europol (the European Police Organization based in The Hague) was preparing a scathing report on the connection between the KLA and international drug gangs. Even Robert Gelbard, America's special envoy to Bosnia, officially described the KLA as Islamic terrorists.

With the future status of Kosovo still in question, the only real development that may be said to be taking place there is the rise of Wahhabi Islam -- the puritanical Saudi variety favored by bin Laden -- and the fastest growing variety of Islam in the Balkans. Today, in general, the Balkans are left without the money, political resources, or institutional strength to fight a war on terrorism. And that, for the Balkan Islamists, is a Godsend.

[Harconen]

Blast from the past...

Our 'friends' in the Balkans

Posted: November 06, 2001
1:00 am Eastern

By Joseph Farah
© 2009 WorldNetDaily.com
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=25214

While part of the U.S. military is bombing and strafing caves in Afghanistan, determined to root out Osama bin Laden's terror network, in the Balkans, another part of the U.S. military is allied with the Kosovo Liberation Army – which maintains close connections with the al-Qaida network.

War and politics make strange bedfellows.

Long before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S., the KLA has been subverting and destabilizing the nation of Macedonia through a campaign of terror attacks.

You might think U.S. and NATO troops in the area would take a dim view of such activities, given they are supposed to be there on a "peace-keeping" mission.

But that is not the case, according to Yugoslavian and Macedonian sources. NATO has turned a blind eye toward atrocities committed by the KLA.

As recently as 1998, the U.S. State Department recognized the KLA as a terrorist organization. But, during the Clinton administration, it became politically expedient, for whatever reason, for the U.S. and NATO to ally themselves with the KLA.

The KLA's connections to bin Laden were well-known at the time. Yossef Bodansky, author of "Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America," documented in his 1999 book and earlier works that the Balkans served as a major staging area for al-Qaida.

Yet, at the time, few in Congress – from either party – raised many objections to Clinton's policies and alliances in the Balkans.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., for instance, was quoted as saying: "I don't think we have to do a background check [on the KLA] any more than we did on the Contras [of Nicaragua]."

In other words, why make moral distinctions between people? The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Yet, the precise reason the U.S. had any enemies in the Balkans has never been made clear.

By the way, our "other friends," in Muslim-dominated Bosnia, issued a special passport to bin Laden in 1993, so he could travel freely in the area and help establish his base of operations.

But why is all this history important now?

Because nothing has changed.

The KLA is still playing patty-cake with bin Laden's network. And the U.S. and NATO forces are protecting them.

This despite the fact that bin Laden has been planning terror attacks against U.S. and NATO targets in the Balkans just as surely as the KLA is undermining the stability of the region.

Bodansky writes in his most recent book that Clinton was so concerned about the possibility of terrorist attacks on U.S. troops in the Balkans – troops that are still there, I might add – that he sent a special CIA emissary to meet with bin Laden's top lieutenant and strike a deal.

What was the deal?

It was OK with Clinton if bin Laden attacked and overthrew Hosni Mubarak's regime in Egypt as long as no terrorist assaults were directed against American interests in the Balkans.

Now, get this: According to a report last week in the Halifax Herald the key to unraveling the bin Laden network may not be in Afghanistan at all – but in the Balkans. In July and August, just before the terror attack on the U.S., Albanian guerrillas tied to bin Laden gained control over 30 percent of Macedonia.

The Macedonian military said the guerrillas include veterans of Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya. During a major guerrilla offensive, the Macedonians were able to contain the uprising with helicopter gunships acquired from Ukraine. But shortly after that, the helicopters came under attack from U.S.-made Stinger missiles.

Guess where those weapons came from? You got it. Afghanistan.

Let's not forget that one of the Sept. 11 hijackers had been active in both the Kosovo and Macedonia military campaigns.

"We are presently concentrating on assembling verifiable proof which will assist the CIA in disassembling Osama bin Laden's terrorist network," the deputy director of the Macedonian intelligence service was quoted as saying.

But, listen to this from the Halifax Herald report: "According to Macedonian intelligence operatives, the biggest obstacle to their investigative efforts is political pressure from NATO – including direct interference from the United States."

It seems there may still be a political campaign under way to cover up the mistakes of the past – even at the expense of endangering our own forces on the ground in the Balkans and even at the expense of permitting bin Laden to achieve his goals there.

[Harconen]

Blast from the past...

The Truth behind 9/11: Who Is Osama Bin Laden?
At 11am, on the morning of 9/11, the Bush administration had announced that Osama was behind the attacks.

by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, September 11, 2008
- 2006-09-10
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=3198

This article below entitled Who is Osama bin Laden? was drafted on September 11, 2001. It was first  published on the Global Research website on the evening of September 12, 2001.

Since 2001, it has appeared on numerous websites. The original September 11, 2001 posting is one of the most widely read articles on the internet, pertaining to Al Qaeda.  

From the outset, the objective was to use 9/11 as a pretext for launching the first phase of the Middle East War, which consisted in the bombing and occupation of Afghanistan.

Within hours of the attacks, Osama bin Laden was identified as the architect of 9/11. On the following day, the "war on terrorism" had been launched. The media disinformation campaign went into full gear.

Also on September 12, less than 24 hours after the attacks, NATO invoked for the first time in its history "Article 5 of the Washington Treaty - its collective defence clause" declaring the 9/11 attacks on  the World Trade Center (WTC) and the Pentagon "to be an attack against all NATO members."

What happened subsequently, with the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq is already part of history. Iran and Syria constitute the next phase of the US adminstration's military roadmap.

9/11 remains the pretext and justification for waging a war without borders.


Michel Chossudovsky, September 11, 2008

Excerpts from the Preface of America's "War on Terrorism", Second edition, Global Research, 2005.

At eleven o’clock, on the morning of September 11, the Bush administration had already announced that Al Qaeda was responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC) and the Pentagon. This assertion was made prior to the conduct of an indepth police investigation.

That same evening at 9.30 pm, a "War Cabinet" was formed integrated by a select number of top intelligence and military advisors.  And at 11.00 pm, at the end of that historic meeting at the White House, the "War on Terrorism" was officially launched.

The decision was announced to wage war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in retribution for the 9/11 attacks. The following morning on September 12th, the news headlines indelibly pointed to "state sponsorship" of the 9/11 attacks. In chorus, the US media was calling for a military intervention against Afghanistan.

Barely four weeks later, on the 7th of October, Afghanistan was bombed and invaded by US troops. Americans were led to believe that the decison to go to war had been taken on the spur of the moment, on the evening of September 11, in response to the attacks and their tragic consequences.

Little did the public realize that a large scale theater war is never planned and executed in a matter of weeks. The decision to launch a war and send troops to Afghanistan had been taken well in advance of 9/11. The "terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event" as it was later described by CentCom Commander General Tommy Franks, served to galvanize public opinion in support of a war agenda which was already in its final planning stage.

The tragic events of 9/11 provided the required justification to wage a war on "humanitarian grounds", with the full support of World public opinion and the endorsement of the "international community".

Several prominent "progressive" intellectuals made a case for "retaliation against terrorism", on moral and ethical grounds. The "just cause" military doctrine (jus ad bellum) was accepted and upheld at face value as a legitimate response to 9/11, without examining the fact that Washington had not only supported the "Islamic terror network", it was also instrumental in the installation of the Taliban government in 1996.

In the wake of 9/11, the antiwar movement was completely isolated. The trade unions and civil society organizations had swallowed the media lies and government propaganda. They had accepted a war of retribution against Afghanistan, an impoverished country of 30 million people.

I started writing on the evening of September 11, late into the night, going through piles of research notes, which I had previously collected on the history of Al Qaeda. My first text entitled "Who is Osama bin Laden?" was completed and first published on September the 12th. (See full text of 9/12 article below).

From the very outset, I questioned the official story, which described nineteen Al Qaeda sponsored hijackers involved in a highly sophisticated and organized operation. My first objective was to reveal the true nature of this illusive "enemy of America", who was "threatening the Homeland".

The myth of the "outside enemy" and the threat of "Islamic terrorists" was the cornerstone of the Bush adminstration’s military doctrine, used as a pretext to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention the repeal of civil liberties and constitutional government in America.

Without an "outside enemy", there could be no "war on terrorism". The entire national security agenda would collapse "like a deck of cards". The war criminals in high office would have no leg to stand on.

It was consequently crucial for the development of a coherent antiwar and civil rights movement, to reveal the nature of Al Qaeda and its evolving relationship to successive US adminstrations. Amply documented but rarely mentioned by the mainstream media, Al Qaeda was a creation of the CIA going back to the Soviet-Afghan war. This was a known fact, corroborated by numerous sources including official documents of the US Congress. The intelligence community had time and again acknowledged that they had indeed supported Osama bin Laden, but that in the wake of the Cold War: "he turned against us".

After 9/11, the campaign of media disinformation served not only to drown the truth but also to kill much of the historical evidence on how this illusive "outside enemy" had been fabricated and transformed into "Enemy Number One".

Michel Chossudovsky, Excerpts from the Preface of America's "War on Terrorism", Second edition, Global Research, 2005.

Who Is Osama Bin Laden?

by Michel Chossudovsky

www.globalresearch.ca
September 12, 2001
 

A few hours after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, the Bush administration concluded without supporting evidence, that "Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organisation were prime suspects". CIA Director George Tenet stated that bin Laden has the capacity to plan ``multiple attacks with little or no warning.'' Secretary of State Colin Powell called the attacks "an act of war" and President Bush confirmed in an evening televised address to the Nation that he would "make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them". Former CIA Director James Woolsey pointed his finger at "state sponsorship," implying the complicity of one or more foreign governments. In the words of former National Security Adviser, Lawrence Eagleburger, "I think we will show when we get attacked like this, we are terrible in our strength and in our retribution."

Meanwhile, parroting official statements, the Western media mantra has approved the launching of "punitive actions" directed against civilian targets in the Middle East. In the words of William Saffire writing in the New York Times: "When we reasonably determine our attackers' bases and camps, we must pulverize them -- minimizing but accepting the risk of collateral damage" -- and act overtly or covertly to destabilize terror's national hosts".

The following text outlines the history of Osama Bin Laden and the links of the Islamic "Jihad" to the formulation of US foreign policy during the Cold War and its aftermath.

Prime suspect in the New York and Washington terrorists attacks, branded by the FBI as an "international terrorist" for his role in the African US embassy bombings, Saudi born Osama bin Laden was recruited during the Soviet-Afghan war "ironically under the auspices of the CIA, to fight Soviet invaders". 1

In 1979 "the largest covert operation in the history of the CIA" was launched in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in support of the pro-Communist government of Babrak Kamal.2:

With the active encouragement of the CIA and Pakistan's ISI [Inter Services Intelligence], who wanted to turn the Afghan jihad into a global war waged by all Muslim states against the Soviet Union, some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 40 Islamic countries joined Afghanistan's fight between 1982 and 1992. Tens of thousands more came to study in Pakistani madrasahs. Eventually more than 100,000 foreign Muslim radicals were directly influenced by the Afghan jihad.3

The Islamic "jihad" was supported by the United States and Saudi Arabia with a significant part of the funding generated from the Golden Crescent drug trade:

In March 1985, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 166,...[which] authorize[d] stepped-up covert military aid to the mujahideen, and it made clear that the secret Afghan war had a new goal: to defeat Soviet troops in Afghanistan through covert action and encourage a Soviet withdrawal. The new covert U.S. assistance began with a dramatic increase in arms supplies -- a steady rise to 65,000 tons annually by 1987, ... as well as a "ceaseless stream" of CIA and Pentagon specialists who traveled to the secret headquarters of Pakistan's ISI on the main road near Rawalpindi, Pakistan. There the CIA specialists met with Pakistani intelligence officers to help plan operations for the Afghan rebels.4

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) using Pakistan's military Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) played a key role in training the Mujahideen. In turn, the CIA sponsored guerrilla training was integrated with the teachings of Islam:

    "Predominant themes were that Islam was a complete socio-political ideology, that holy Islam was being violated by the atheistic Soviet troops, and that the Islamic people of Afghanistan should reassert their independence by overthrowing the leftist Afghan regime propped up by Moscow."5

Pakistan's Intelligence Apparatus

Pakistan's ISI was used as a "go-between". The CIA covert support to the "jihad" operated indirectly through the Pakistani ISI, --i.e. the CIA did not channel its support directly to the Mujahideen. In other words, for these covert operations to be "successful", Washington was careful not to reveal the ultimate objective of the "jihad", which consisted in destroying the Soviet Union.

In the words of CIA's Milton Beardman "We didn't train Arabs". Yet according to Abdel Monam Saidali, of the Al-aram Center for Strategic Studies in Cairo, bin Laden and the "Afghan Arabs" had been imparted "with very sophisticated types of training that was allowed to them by the CIA" 6

CIA's Beardman confirmed, in this regard, that Osama bin Laden was not aware of the role he was playing on behalf of Washington. In the words of bin Laden (quoted by Beardman): "neither I, nor my brothers saw evidence of American help". 7

Motivated by nationalism and religious fervor, the Islamic warriors were unaware that they were fighting the Soviet Army on behalf of Uncle Sam. While there were contacts at the upper levels of the intelligence hierarchy, Islamic rebel leaders in theatre had no contacts with Washington or the CIA.

With CIA backing and the funneling of massive amounts of US military aid, the Pakistani ISI had developed into a "parallel structure wielding enormous power over all aspects of government". 8 The ISI had a staff composed of military and intelligence officers, bureaucrats, undercover agents and informers, estimated at 150,000. 9

Meanwhile, CIA operations had also reinforced the Pakistani military regime led by General Zia Ul Haq:

    'Relations between the CIA and the ISI [Pakistan's military intelligence] had grown increasingly warm following [General] Zia's ouster of Bhutto and the advent of the military regime,'... During most of the Afghan war, Pakistan was more aggressively anti-Soviet than even the United States. Soon after the Soviet military invaded Afghanistan in 1980, Zia [ul Haq] sent his ISI chief to destabilize the Soviet Central Asian states. The CIA only agreed to this plan in October 1984.... `the CIA was more cautious than the Pakistanis.' Both Pakistan and the United States took the line of deception on Afghanistan with a public posture of negotiating a settlement while privately agreeing that military escalation was the best course."10

The Golden Crescent Drug Triangle

The history of the drug trade in Central Asia is intimately related to the CIA's covert operations. Prior to the Soviet-Afghan war, opium production in Afghanistan and Pakistan was directed to small regional markets. There was no local production of heroin. 11 In this regard, Alfred McCoy's study confirms that within two years of the onslaught of the CIA operation in Afghanistan, "the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands became the world's top heroin producer, supplying 60 percent of U.S. demand. In Pakistan, the heroin-addict population went from near zero in 1979... to 1.2 million by 1985 -- a much steeper rise than in any other nation":12

    CIA assets again controlled this heroin trade. As the Mujahideen guerrillas seized territory inside Afghanistan, they ordered peasants to plant opium as a revolutionary tax. Across the border in Pakistan, Afghan leaders and local syndicates under the protection of Pakistan Intelligence operated hundreds of heroin laboratories. During this decade of wide-open drug-dealing, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency in Islamabad failed to instigate major seizures or arrests ... U.S. officials had refused to investigate charges of heroin dealing by its Afghan allies `because U.S. narcotics policy in Afghanistan has been subordinated to the war against Soviet influence there.' In 1995, the former CIA director of the Afghan operation, Charles Cogan, admitted the CIA had indeed sacrificed the drug war to fight the Cold War. `Our main mission was to do as much damage as possible to the Soviets. We didn't really have the resources or the time to devote to an investigation of the drug trade,'... `I don't think that we need to apologize for this. Every situation has its fallout.... There was fallout in terms of drugs, yes. But the main objective was accomplished. The Soviets left Afghanistan.'13

In the Wake of the Cold War

In the wake of the Cold War, the Central Asian region is not only strategic for its extensive oil reserves, it also produces three quarters of the World's opium representing multibillion dollar revenues to business syndicates, financial institutions, intelligence agencies and organized crime. The annual proceeds of the Golden Crescent drug trade (between 100 and 200 billion dollars) represents approximately one third of the Worldwide annual turnover of narcotics, estimated by the United Nations to be of the order of $500 billion.14

With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, a new surge in opium production has unfolded. (According to UN estimates, the production of opium in Afghanistan in 1998-99 -- coinciding with the build up of armed insurgencies in the former Soviet republics-- reached a record high of 4600 metric tons.15 Powerful business syndicates in the former Soviet Union allied with organized crime are competing for the strategic control over the heroin routes.

The ISI's extensive intelligence military-network was not dismantled in the wake of the Cold War. The CIA continued to support the Islamic "jihad" out of Pakistan. New undercover initiatives were set in motion in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Balkans. Pakistan's military and intelligence apparatus essentially "served as a catalyst for the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of six new Muslim republics in Central Asia." 16.

Meanwhile, Islamic missionaries of the Wahhabi sect from Saudi Arabia had established themselves in the Muslim republics as well as within the Russian federation encroaching upon the institutions of the secular State. Despite its anti-American ideology, Islamic fundamentalism was largely serving Washington's strategic interests in the former Soviet Union.

Following the withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1989, the civil war in Afghanistan continued unabated. The Taliban were being supported by the Pakistani Deobandis and their political party the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI). In 1993, JUI entered the government coalition of Prime Minister Benazzir Bhutto. Ties between JUI, the Army and ISI were established. In 1995, with the downfall of the Hezb-I-Islami Hektmatyar government in Kabul, the Taliban not only instated a hardline Islamic government, they also "handed control of training camps in Afghanistan over to JUI factions..." 17

And the JUI with the support of the Saudi Wahhabi movements played a key role in recruiting volunteers to fight in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union.

Jane Defense Weekly confirms in this regard that "half of Taliban manpower and equipment originate[d] in Pakistan under the ISI" 18

In fact, it would appear that following the Soviet withdrawal both sides in the Afghan civil war continued to receive covert support through Pakistan's ISI. 19

In other words, backed by Pakistan's military intelligence (ISI) which in turn was controlled by the CIA, the Taliban Islamic State was largely serving American geopolitical interests. The Golden Crescent drug trade was also being used to finance and equip the Bosnian Muslim Army (starting in the early 1990s) and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In last few months there is evidence that Mujahideen mercenaries are fighting in the ranks of KLA-NLA terrorists in their assaults into Macedonia.

No doubt, this explains why Washington has closed its eyes on the reign of terror imposed by the Taliban including the blatant derogation of women's rights, the closing down of schools for girls, the dismissal of women employees from government offices and the enforcement of "the Sharia laws of punishment".20
The War in Chechnya

With regard to Chechnya, the main rebel leaders Shamil Basayev and Al Khattab were trained and indoctrinated in CIA sponsored camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to Yossef Bodansky, director of the U.S. Congress's Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, the war in Chechnya had been planned during a secret summit of HizbAllah International held in 1996 in Mogadishu, Somalia. 21 The summit, was attended by Osama bin Laden and high-ranking Iranian and Pakistani intelligence officers. In this regard, the involvement of Pakistan's ISI in Chechnya "goes far beyond supplying the Chechens with weapons and expertise: the ISI and its radical Islamic proxies are actually calling the shots in this war". 22

Russia's main pipeline route transits through Chechnya and Dagestan. Despite Washington's perfunctory condemnation of Islamic terrorism, the indirect beneficiaries of the Chechen war are the Anglo-American oil conglomerates which are vying for control over oil resources and pipeline corridors out of the Caspian Sea basin.

The two main Chechen rebel armies (respectively led by Commander Shamil Basayev and Emir Khattab) estimated at 35,000 strong were supported by Pakistan's ISI, which also played a key role in organizing and training the Chechen rebel army:

    "[In 1994] the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence arranged for Basayev and his trusted lieutenants to undergo intensive Islamic indoctrination and training in guerrilla warfare in the Khost province of Afghanistan at Amir Muawia camp, set up in the early 1980s by the CIA and ISI and run by famous Afghani warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In July 1994, upon graduating from Amir Muawia, Basayev was transferred to Markaz-i-Dawar camp in Pakistan to undergo training in advanced guerrilla tactics. In Pakistan, Basayev met the highest ranking Pakistani military and intelligence officers: Minister of Defense General Aftab Shahban Mirani, Minister of Interior General Naserullah Babar, and the head of the ISI branch in charge of supporting Islamic causes, General Javed Ashraf, (all now retired). High-level connections soon proved very useful to Basayev."23

Following his training and indoctrination stint, Basayev was assigned to lead the assault against Russian federal troops in the first Chechen war in 1995. His organization had also developed extensive links to criminal syndicates in Moscow as well as ties to Albanian organized crime and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In 1997-98, according to Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) "Chechen warlords started buying up real estate in Kosovo... through several real estate firms registered as a cover in Yugoslavia" 24

Basayev's organisation has also been involved in a number of rackets including narcotics, illegal tapping and sabotage of Russia's oil pipelines, kidnapping, prostitution, trade in counterfeit dollars and the smuggling of nuclear materials (See Mafia linked to Albania's collapsed pyramids, 25 Alongside the extensive laundering of drug money, the proceeds of various illicit activities have been funneled towards the recruitment of mercenaries and the purchase of weapons.

During his training in Afghanistan, Shamil Basayev linked up with Saudi born veteran Mujahideen Commander "Al Khattab" who had fought as a volunteer in Afghanistan. Barely a few months after Basayev's return to Grozny, Khattab was invited (early 1995) to set up an army base in Chechnya for the training of Mujahideen fighters. According to the BBC, Khattab's posting to Chechnya had been "arranged through the Saudi-Arabian based [International] Islamic Relief Organisation, a militant religious organisation, funded by mosques and rich individuals which channeled funds into Chechnya".26
Concluding Remarks

Since the Cold War era, Washington has consciously supported Osama bin Laden, while at same time placing him on the FBI's "most wanted list" as the World's foremost terrorist.

While the Mujahideen are busy fighting America's war in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union, the FBI --operating as a US based Police Force- is waging a domestic war against terrorism, operating in some respects independently of the CIA which has --since the Soviet-Afghan war-- supported international terrorism through its covert operations.

In a cruel irony, while the Islamic jihad --featured by the Bush Adminstration as "a threat to America"-- is blamed for the terrorist assaults on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, these same Islamic organisations constitute a key instrument of US military-intelligence operations in the Balkans and the former Soviet Union.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, the truth must prevail to prevent the Bush Adminstration together with its NATO partners from embarking upon a military adventure which threatens the future of humanity.

[Harconen]

America at War in Macedonia

Title: "NATO Invades Macedonia"
Author: Michel Chossudovsky
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2756619

The CIA destabilized the political balance in Macedonia to allow easier access for a US-British owned oil pipeline, and to prevent Macedonia from entering the European Union (EU), thereby strengthening the US dollar in a German deutschmark dominated region.

Without Macedonia in the EU, British and US oil companies have an advantage over European counterparts in building oil pipelines......

.......The fact that Al Qaeda continues to support KLA terrorist operations in Macedonia, with the full support of NATO and the US government, has been carefully overlooked. With the complicity of NATO and the US State Department. Mujahideen mercenaries from the Middle East and Central Asia were first recruited to fight in the ranks of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1998-99, largely supporting NATO's war effort.

Bin Laden had visited Albania himself. His was one of several fundamentalist groups that had sent units to fight in Kosovo. He is believed to have established an operation in Albania in 1994. Albanian sources say Sali Berisha, who was then president, had links with some groups that later proved to be extreme fundamentalists. (Sunday Times, London, 29 November 1998.)........

Among the foreign mercenaries now fighting in Macedonia (October 2001), in the ranks of self-proclaimed National Liberation Army (NLA), are Mujahideen from the Middle East and the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Also within the KLA's proxy force in Macedonia are senior US military advisers from a private mercenary outfit on contract to the Pentagon. (Scotland on Sunday, Glasgow, 15 June 2001)

Extensively documented by the Macedonian press and statements of the Macedonian authorities, the US government and the "Islamic Militant Network" are working hand in glove in supporting and financing the self-proclaimed National Liberation Army (NLA), involved in the terrorist attacks in Macedonia. The NLA is a proxy of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In turn the KLA and the UN sponsored Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC) are identical institutions with the same commanders and military personnel. KPC Commanders on UN salaries are fighting in the NLA together with the Mujahideen. In a bitter twist, while supported and financed by Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda, the KLA-NLA is also supported by NATO and the United Nations mission to Kosovo (UNMIK).

The KLA-NLA terrorists are funded by US military aid, the United Nations peace-keeping budget, as well as by several Islamic organisations including Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda. Meanwhile, drug money is being used to finance the terrorists with the complicity of the US government. US military advisers mingle with Mujahideen within the same paramilitary force, Western mercenaries from NATO countries fight alongside Mujahideen recruited in the Middle East and Central Asia.

The Bush Administration has stated that it has proof that Osama bin Laden is behind the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon. A major war, supposedly "against international terrorism", has been launched by the Bush Administration. In Macedonia, however, the evidence amply confirms that the Bush Administration (together with NATO) is directly supporting terrorist organisations which have links to Al Qaeda. In other words, the Bush Administration is harboring international terrorism as part of its foreign policy agenda. The main justification for waging the so-called war on terrorism has been a total fabrication. The American people have been deliberately and consciously misled by their government into supporting a major military adventure which affects our collective future......

[Harconen]

Bin Laden’s Balkan Connections

The Centre for Peace in the Balkans
http://www.balkanpeace.org/index.php?index=/content/analysis/a09.incl

IN MEMORIAM
Dedicated to all victims of terrorism, including a member of The Centre for Peace in the Balkans who is still listed as missing in the World Trade Centre bombing.

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on February 2, 1999, CIA Director George Tenet warned of the worldwide threat posed by the Bin Laden network:

"There is not the slightest doubt that Osama Bin Laden, his worldwide allies, and his sympathizers are planning further attacks against us. Despite progress against his networks, Bin Laden´s organization has contacts virtually worldwide, including in the United States. And he has stated unequivocally that all Americans are targets. Bin Laden´s overreaching aim is to get the United States out of the Persian Gulf, but he will strike wherever in the world he thinks we are vulnerable. We are anticipating bombing attempts with conventional explosives, but his operatives are also capable of kidnappings and assassinations. We have noted recent activities similar to what occurred prior to the African embassy bombings, Mr. Chairman, and I must tell you that we are concerned that one or more of Bin Laden´s attacks could occur at any time."

According to the September 15, 2001 issue of the New York Times (U.S. Demands Arab Countries ´Choose Sides´ by Jane Perlez) the United States has issued a communiqué to its embassies around the world "…listing the conditions that nations were expected to meet in order to qualify for membership in the anti-terror coalition." Considering that the US supports countries where many terrorists originate or are trained (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania), we are concerned about the fallout should those countries fail to meet the stated US demands.

Furthermore, we must note with tragic irony that the United States trained and financed Islamicist “freedom fighters” during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, to the tune of $10 billion (September 13, 2001, Washington Times). Osama Bin Laden was part and parcel of that military “aid” program.

Yet, it would be willful blindness to suggest that the roots of terror begin and end in Afghanistan or the Middle East. When examining events that have transpired in the Balkans over the past ten years, Osama Bin Laden’s name appears prominently. Bin Laden directly aided the Bosnian Muslims, both financially (weapons procurement) and with training. In addition, that same “aid” was extended to the separatist Albanians of Kosovo and Macedonia. Ironically, the US found Bin Laden and his supporters “convenient” allies when dealing with Bosnian Muslims and Kosovo Albanians, again in another so-called struggle for “freedom”.

Bosnia

Bosnian Muslim weekly “Dani” reported on September 24, 1999, that Osama Bin Laden, the most wanted terrorist in the world, was issued a Bosnia-Herzegovina passport. Bin Laden was issued the Bosnian passport by the Bosnian embassy in Vienna in 1993. However, Bin Laden was not the only one. A number of suspected terrorists have traveled the globe utilizing “legally issued” Bosnia-Herzegovina documents.

According to ‘Dani’, the Bosnian Foreign Ministry was seized by panic when Mehrez Aodouni, another Bosnian passport bearer, was arrested in Istanbul on September 09, 1999. Aodouni was believed to have close ties with Bin Laden. The Party of Democratic Action (SDA) [Bosnia´s main Muslim party led by Bosnian President, Alija Izetbegovic] issued a statement that on September 23, 1999, Audouni obtained the Bosnia-Herzegovina citizenship and a passport because he was a member of the Bosnia-Herzegovina Army.

The Bosnian Muslim daily "Oslobodjenje" published that three men, believed linked to Saudi extremist Osama Bin Laden, were arrested in Sarajevo in July 2001. The three, one of whom was identified as Imad El Misri, were Egyptian nationals. The paper said that two of the suspects were holding Bosnian passports.

The arrest, carried out by police from Bosnia’s Muslim-Croat Federation, was requested by the United States, Oslobodjenje said.

The Dayton peace agreement, that ended Bosnia’s civil war, ordered all foreign soldiers to leave the country, including those who fought alongside the mainly Muslim government army. Many of those who fought in the Bosnian Muslim Army included ranks of Islamicist radicals from the Arab world, Afghanistan, Pakistan and South East Asia. However, an undisclosed number remained, obtaining Bosnian citizenship as members of the army or by marrying Bosnian women.

At the end of the civil war many of these so-called mujahadeen remained on territories controlled by the Bosnian-Croat Federation, instructing Muslim forces in terrorist activities. Those activities came to light on December 18, 1995, with the premature detonation of an automobile bomb in Zenica. It is widely speculated that the bomb was meant for U.S. NATO troops serving in Bosnia-Herzegovina as revenge for the life sentence given to Sheik Omah Abdel Rahman, the brain behind the World Trade Centre bombing in New York.

Also noteworthy is the raid conducted by NATO forces on the training center of the Bosnian Muslim secret police (AID), located in the ski center near Fojnica in February of 1996, and the arrest of several persons for preparing to conduct terrorist actions. Iranian instructors were teaching future terrorists from AID how to disguise bombs as children’s toys, dolls, and plastic ice cream cones.

In its June 26, 1997 Report on the bombing of the Al Khobar building in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the New York Times noted that those arrested confessed to serving with Bosnian Muslims forces. Further, the terrorists also admitted to ties with Osama Bin Laden.

Defence and Foreign Affairs analyst Yossef Bodansky wrote in 1997 that Iran, from its terrorist bases in Bosnia-Herzegovina, planned the assassination of Pope John Paul II. The assassination was planned towards the end of September 1997. A terrorist group consisting of 20 members holding Croatian, Bosnia-Herzegovinian, Tunisian, Algerian and Moroccan passports were to assassinate the Pope during his Bologna visit. The leaders of the group were all former mujahadeen from Bosnia-Herzegovina. Logistical support for the group was secured through a local terrorist network which was closely associated with GIA. Italian authorities discovered the assassination attempt in time and managed to arrest 14 members of the terrorist cell.

Many mujahadeen in Bosnia are now located in what was the pre-war Serbian village of Bocinja Donja. Today, a sign on the road into the town warns visitors to "be afraid of Allah."

The village´s 600 residents include 60 to 100 former mujahadeen, Islamicist guerrillas from the Middle East and elsewhere who came to help Bosnia´s Muslims during the 1992-95 civil war. Since the conflict ended, they and their families have organized a community that stands apart from the rest of Bosnia, whose Muslim majority largely follows a relaxed version of Islam. Bocinja Donja´s affairs, in contrast, are governed by a strict interpretation of Islamic law. Women must wear veils and long black robes; men must have long beards. Smoking and drink is forbidden, as well speaking to visitors.

Washington and its allies have complained periodically about the mujahadeen, who were technically obligated by international treaty to leave the country in 1995. But Western complaints lacked urgency until late 1999, when U.S. law enforcement authorities discovered that a handful of the men who have visited or lived in this area were associated with a suspected terrorist plot to bomb targets in the United States on New Year´s Day.

Among them was Karim Said Atmani, who was identified by authorities as the document forger for a group of Algerians accused of plotting the bombings. He is a former roommate of Ahmet Ressemi, the man arrested at the Canadian-U.S. border in mid-December 1999 with a carload of explosives. Atmani has been a frequent visitor to Bosnia, even after Ressmi´s arrest.

A Bosnian government search of passport and residency records--conducted at the urging of the United States--revealed other former mujahadeen who are linked to the same Algerian group or to other suspected terrorist groups and who have lived in this area 60 miles north of Sarajevo, the capital, in the past few years.

One man, a Palestinian named Khalil Deek, was arrested in Jordan in late December 1999 on suspicion of involvement in a plot to blow up tourist sites; a second man with Bosnian citizenship, Hamid Aich, lived in Canada at the same time as Atmani and worked for a charity associated with Osama Bin Laden.

A third suspect, an Algerian named Abu Mali who was regarded as a community leader in Bocinja, was asked to leave the country with his family in spring of 1999 after Washington accumulated evidence that he worked for a terrorist organization. Mehrez Amdouni, another former resident, was arrested by Turkish police in September of 1999 in Istanbul, where he arrived with a Bosnian passport. Amdouni was charged with counterfeiting and possessing stolen goods.

The Centre for Peace in the Balkans wrote in Spring of 2000:

The December 14, 1999, arrest of Algerian national Ahmet Ressemi at a U.S.-Canada border crossing in British Columbia – he was in a car full of nitroglycerin and bomb-making materials – was headline news in North America. Many theorized that Ressemi planned to blow up a major structure in the U.S. to start the new millenium.

The theorists could have saved themselves some time by taking a closer look at Ressemi’s past ties, especially those with terrorists trained in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where Ressemi fought as a mujahadeen.

It has been confirmed that Ahmet Ressemi had ties with Said Atmani, another terrorist who fought in the "El Mujahadeen" unit in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Canadian authorities deported Atmani back to Bosnia-Herzegovina on October 18, 1998, supposedly without knowing of his alleged participation in terrorist activities through Europe.

The NY Times, in it´s "Magazine" edition of February 6, 2000 published that: "Last year, sources in Jordan say, the Mukhabarat, the intelligence service, alerted the C.I.A. to at least three plots by Bosnia-based Islamic terrorists to attack U.S. targets in Europe."

Recently, Kenneth Katzman, of the Library of Congress’ Congressional Research Service, released an updated report on terrorism. That report identified cells of the Bin Laden Al-Quaida Network in the Middle East, Africa, Bosnia, and Albania.

Albania/ Kosovo Albanians

Osama Bin Laden’s activities in Albania are well known and documented. As a matter of fact at one point the presence of his network in that country was so powerful that US Defence Secretary William Cohen cancelled a scheduled visit July 1999 for fear of being assassinated.

It is believed that Bin Laden solidified his organization in Albania in 1994 with the help of then premier Sali Berisha. Albania’s ties to the Islamicist terrorist blossomed during Berisha´s rule when the main Kosovo Albanian KLA training base was on Berisha´s property in northern Albania.

Fundamentalists were well established in Albania, despite several raids by the CIA and Albanian security forces that seized five key members of Islamic Jihad and other Middle Eastern groups in summer of 1998.

Around that time, a joint CIA-Albanian intelligence operation has reported mujahadeen units from at least half a dozen Middle East countries streaming across the border into Kosovo from bases in Albania. The American request came at a meeting of US envoys with the leaders of the ethnic-Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army at their headquarters in Geneva.

A few years ago, Albanian authorities working with the Central Intelligence Agency claimed to have uncovered a terrorist network operated by Osama Bin Laden. The network is said to have been set up to use Albania, a nominally Muslim country, as a springboard for operations in Europe.

Fatos Klosi, the head of Shik, the Albanian intelligence service, said that Bin Laden had visited Albania himself.

Bin Laden’s organization was one of several fundamentalist groups that had sent units to fight in Kosovo, the neighboring province of Serbia. Apparent confirmation of Bin Laden´s activities came when Claude Kader, 27, a French national and self-confessed member of Bin Laden´s Albanian network, was jailed for the murder of a local translator. He claimed during his trial that he had visited Albania to recruit and arm fighters for Kosovo, and that four of his associates were still at large.

Bin Laden is believed to have established an operation in Albania in 1994 after telling the government that he was head of a wealthy Saudi humanitarian agency keen to help Europe´s poorest nation.

In April 2000 the Yugoslav news agency Tanjug said the "notorious international terrorist" and "Islamic fanatic" arrived in Kosovo from Albania.

"Until recently, Bin Laden was training a group of almost 500 mujahadeen [Muslim fighters] from Arab countries around the Albanian towns of Podgrade and Korce for terrorist actions in Kosovo."

The report added that an eventual 2000-strong group of "extremists" planned "to set off a new wave of violence in southern Serbia (the area linked by the towns Presevo, Bujanovac, Medvedja)."

In March of 2000, the BBC reported that KFOR raided a Saudi charity operating in Kosovo after being tipped off by U.S. officials that it may have links to Bin Laden. The Islamic relief organization strongly denied the allegations.

Before the NATO air campaign, the Yugoslav government said on its website that KLA fighters from Kosovo had been attending terrorist training camps in Arab states, "financed by some renegade Saudi businessmen" - an apparent reference to Bin Laden.

In May of 1999, the Washington Times reported that the KLA had borrowed money "from known terrorists like Osama Bin Laden."

Two months earlier, Israeli investigative journalist Steve Rodan wrote that, according to European security and diplomatic sources, "Kosovo has become the latest and most significant arena for radical Islamic states and groups that seek to widen their influence in Europe."

Macedonia

The danger exhibited by Macedonia was foreseen by Henry Kissinger in his Washington Post article of February 22, 1999 ("No U.S. Ground Forces for Kosovo: Leadership Doesn´t Mean That We Must Do Everything for Ourselves"):

"Ironically, the projected peace agreement increases the likelihood of the various possible escalations sketched by the president as justifications for a U.S. deployment. An independent Albanian Kosovo surely would seek to incorporate the neighboring Albanian minorities -- mostly in Macedonia -- and perhaps even Albania itself. And a Macedonian conflict would land us precisely back in the Balkan wars of earlier in this century. Will Kosovo then become the premise for a NATO move into Macedonia, just as the deployment in Bosnia is invoked as justification for the move into Kosovo? Is NATO to be the home for a whole series of Balkan NATO protectorates?"

The connection between Macedonia, its conflict and Bin Laden’s involvement can be gleaned from a Washington Times editorial on June 22, 2001, ("Bin Laden´s new special envoys"):

"[The NLA] is fighting to keep control over the region’s drug trafficking, which has grown into a large, lucrative enterprise since the Kosovo war. In addition to drug money, the NLA also has another prominent venture capitalist: Osama Bin Laden.

The Muslim terrorist leader, according to a document obtained by The Washington Times and written by the chief commander of the Macedonian Security Forces, puts out the front money for the rebel group through a representative in Macedonia: "This person is representative of Osama Bin Laden, who is the main financial supporter of the National Liberation Army, where to date he has paid $6 to $7 million for the needs of the National Liberation Army.”

It is important to point out that in Macedonia, local drug-trafficking is now out of control. Osama Bin Laden is realizing that this growing reality of Albanian narco-terrorism could lead to the emergence of a situation in which his venture may become powerful enough to control one or more states in the region. In practical terms, this will involve either Albania or Macedonia, or both. Politically, this is now being done by channeling profits from narco-terrorism into local governments and political parties.

Strategically, Macedonia is very important to Osama Bin Laden and his followers from another perspective as well. It closes the loop between East and West, and more particularly it gives him an open hand when it comes to control of the new pipeline that is planned to stretch from Bulgaria to Albania ports. This way Osama Bin Laden would have the ability to control the distribution of oil to the United States.

Conclusion

This article has attempted to deliver the reader with the evidence of the influence gained by Osama Bin Laden in the Balkans. The Centre for Peace in the Balkans, throughout its existence, has warned that tacit cooperation with terrorists like Osama Bin Laden would undoubtedly result in catastrophic consequences around the globe. Turning a blind-eye while Bosnian Muslims and Albanians in Yugoslavia and Macedonia actively worked with Islamicist terrorist elements, right under the nose of NATO, was bound to destabilize other parts of the world. Strengthened and emboldened by success in the Balkans, these terrorists have now gone on to fulfill what in essence was the Crown Jewel of terror, terror over the whole of North America. In fact, it is certain that the New York and Washington catastrophes served as a recruitment advertisement for the movement.

Yesterday it was the Balkans, today the USA, tomorrow it’s anybody’s guess. After the events of September 11th, it appears that our imagination is too conservative for the minds of terror. The United States and NATO countries found these terrorist elements “useful” in the service of past policy objectives, whether it was Afghanistan, Bosnia or Kosovo. The real question now is who was using whom? Radical terrorists, whether Islamicist or not, are tigers which cannot be ridden. The foolishness of how any Pentagon, CIA or State Department analyst could have viewed otherwise became horrifically apparent on September 11, 2001.

[Harconen]

Terrorists working for western countries

http://nafeez.blogspot.com/2009/01/norwegian-daily-terrorists-working-for.html

We have been told that Western countries would do everything they could to eradicate Al-Qaeda in the "war on terror". But Western intelligence has from the 1990s, used terrorists to do dirty work in a number of countries.


By Kirstin Aalen
24th November 2008

During the Cold War, the United States was concerned to break the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The CIA cooperated with Saudi Arabian and Pakistani intelligence to support Muslim guerrilla soldiers - mujahedin - in the fight against the communists.

Thousands of Islamic jihadists (holy warriors) were trained in Osama bin Laden's training camps until the late 1980s. They came from Arab countries in the Middle East and North Africa and was called Arab Afghans. In 1988, Al-Qaida was founded.

So what?

The Soviets gave up Afghanistan in 1989. Bin Laden's men fought in a couple of years of civil war that followed. So against whom should the jihadists now fight their holy war ? The regimes they came from would not tolerate fundamentalist guerrilla fighters in their own backyard.

Western intelligence services saw an opportunity. Documentation proves that British and American players in particular exploited the brutality of Al-Qaeda. "The goal has been to destabilize regions where Anglo-American power wanted to secure control over oil and gas resources," said the British terrorism analyst Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed. He has written several books on the subject.

Flown on

In 1991 came three US military agents arrived in Azerbaijan. They arranged to fly in over 2,000 mujahedin soldiers. The job was to create rebellion and remove Russian influence. Bin Laden established an Al-Qaida's office in Baku. It was a base for terrorist actions in the Muslim neighborhood near Russia. After two years of unrest the democratically elected president was overthrown in June 1993. The corrupt Alijev took power. Now western and Saudi oil companies could secure a lucrative contract. Construction of the pipeline oil Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan could begin - bypassing Russia.

Moved forward

In 1992 the war in Bosnia began. An official Dutch report authored in 2002 by Professor Cees Wiebes from the University of Amsterdam shows that the Pentagon secretly flew thousands of Al-Qaida soldiers into Bosnia, ostensibly in support of Bosnian Muslims. But these brutal thugs provoked the Serbs so that a peaceful solution was impossible. Nato and the United States supported the Bosnian Muslims with the air strikes.

In 1996, the Kosovo Liberation Army was trained by a high-ranking Al-Qaeda-operative across the border to Albania. But simultaneously, British and US military experts helped.

Macedonia

In 2001, jihadists turned up in Macedonia, now in the guise of the nationalist sister faction, the National Liberation Army (NLA), which was secretly sponsored by Nato and the United States for years as revealed in the Dutch and German media.

Yet Macedonian intelligence reported that Al-Qaeda was also training the NLA in the Kumanovo-Lipkovo region. This information was sent to the CIA and National Security Council in the United States.

Libya

In 1997, the British MI5 anti-terror agent David Shayler revealed that British intelligence in 1995-96 gave 100,000 pounds to Al-Qaida's network in Libya, to plan and complete an assassination of the head of state Col. Mohammar Gaddafi.

Ahmed points out that the other areas where Western covert operations have used al-Qaeda terrorists include Algeria, Egypt, Chechnya (see Graph) and even the Philippines. These case studies show how the activities of Islamic terrorist groups linked to Al-Qaeda through training, money, weapons and fighters have been sponsored by the Anglo-American alliance. "Either by direct or indirect support through state intermediaries. The overall purpose has been to secure control over raw materials, especially oil and gas," said Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed.

===
translation of text in Graph:

KOSOVO 1996-99:

Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was financed by the heroin trade from Afghanistan and from Osama bin Laden. Many soldier-mercenaries were trained in terrorist camps in Afghanistan. According to Interpol, a KLA unit led by one of bin Laden's senior men, probably Mohammed Al-Zawahiri, was a brother of bin Laden's right hand, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

TRAIN: From 1998 the KLA also trained and armed by NATO. British and U.S. experts helped in the training of Tropoje in Albania.

PURPOSE: The British and the Americans used the KLA to destabilize Kosovo and the increase ethnic animosity. They would gain control of the land areas that could open the way for an oil pipeline via Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania, except Russia and Iran.

LISTED: This happened despite the fact that the KLA in 1998 was put on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations.

ALGERIA 1992-99:

GIA: Early in the 90s emerged the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) - strong in Algeria and with close ties to Osama bin Laden in Sudan. Throughout the 90s committed a series of atrocities in Algeria, which led to 150,000 civilians killed.

REVELATIONS: In 1997 it was revealed that the massacres took place in cooperation between the GIA and the Algerian etterret-business service and military. Western regimes denied the connection, but several whistleblowers claimed that they have known about this connection.

SALE: Sunday Times and Reuter reported in 2000 that Britain sold a large batch weapons to Algeria. U.S. and Algerian military increased their cooperation in 1999.

BOSNIA 1992-95:

SHOCK: Brutal mujahedin / Al-Qaida fighters were used to fight for Bosnian Muslims against Bosnian Serbs. 10,000 participated.

PENTAGON: A Dutch official report revealed in 2002 how the Pentagon leased Islamic jihadists to fight for Bosnian Muslims.

BOSNIAN PASS: Osama bin Laden had Bosnian passports in 1993. He held meetings in Zagreb in Croatia for Arab-Afghan leaders who were Al-Qaida-emissaries in Bosnia.

WEST: the United States and Britain supported the right nationalist President Alija Izetbegovic to sideline and defeat the multi-ethnic policies of popular rival Bosnian Muslim leader Fikret Adbic. This gave the green light to the fragmentation of Yugoslavia. U.S. and NATO bombers contributed to this.

CHECHNYA 2000:

RUSSIA: Key Chechen cooperation in 1999 with high-ranking Al-Qaida operatives about attacks in the Caucasus.

USA: By the summer of 2000 American private security firms armed al-Qaeda-infiltrated Chechens and their Islamist allies to make rebellion in the region and lead holy war against Russia. The U.S. intention was to destroy a Russian pipeline.

AZERBAIJAN 1991-93

AGENTS: Three agents from the U.S. military flew in at least 2,000 al-Qaeda fighters from Afghanistan to Baku in Azerbaijan. Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda established an office in the city, as a base for terrorism in several areas.

USED TO: Hired fighters made rebellion to reduce Russian influence in the country. Elected president Albufas Eltsjibej fled in June -93. In came Heidar Alijev. Several major oil companies supported the coup.

GOALS: Britain's BP led a consortium of Western and Saudi oil companies that would secure a major contract. In the signed to build an oil pipeline from Baku through Georgia to Ceyhan in Turkey, free from Russian control.

LIBYA 1995-97:

In 1997, MI5 anti-terror agent David Shayler revealed that the British MI6 intelligence agency in 1995-96 paid 100,000 pounds to Al-Qaida's network in Libya so that the terrorists would assasinate country's head of state. The operation failed, ended up under the wrong car, killing six innocent Libyans. The British government denied that it was involved, but two French intelligence experts documented that MI6 in the murder plot had hired bin Laden's highly trusted man, Anas al-Libya. He is on the FBI's "Most Wanted" list for the attack on the U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998.

MACEDONIA 2001:

GUERRILLAS: KLA soldiers went on to form the NLA in Macedonia. At one time, the insurgents were surrounded by the Macedonian security forces, but were rescued by NATO and the United States, though their spokesmen denied this. The news was leaked in Dutch and German media in June 2002.

REPORT: Macedonians reported to the CIA and National Security Council that Al-Qaida had trained the NLA in the region. Received only a polite response from U.S. intelligence.

EGYPT 1997:

In the first half of November 1997 the CIA sent a man called Abu-Umar Al-Amriki to Osama bin Laden's close allies, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in Peshawar, Pakistan. There was a deal made between the Egyptian terrorist leader and the CIA. It was that al-Zawahiri would get 50 million U.S. dollars to ensure that U.S. forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina were not attacked by Islamic mujahedin. Egypt would in turn be able to use the money to "to rule over Egypt." Some weeks later, in December 1997, the al-Zawahiris organization, Al-Jihad, the terrorist attack in Luxor.

MOHAMMED ALI:

Was a double agent for Al-Qaida and the CIA / FBI. He was sent in 1984 by al-Zawahiri to infiltrate the CIA. He joined the U.S. Army and worked at the Special Warfare Center in Fort Bragg, where he stole a manual-fighting techniques. He was among other terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center in New York in 1993, but was not sentenced himself. Also under the name of Abu-Umar Al-Amriki (American). Sent by the CIA in 1997 to broker deal with Al-Zawahiri.

Osama bin Laden:

Lived in Afghanistan in 1984-89 and was one of Al-Qaida's leading theoreticians.

1989-91: In Saudi Arabia, but his harsh criticism of the authorities meant he had to go into exile.

1992-96: Ran Al-Qaida from Khartoum in Sudan.

From 1996: Back in Afghanistan. Established a close cooperation with the ruling Taliban government until the US-led invasion in October 2001.

FINANCING: Bin Laden-financed Al-Qaida in part with money from their own family wealth, and partly from funds collected. But in 1994 when he lost his Saudi citizenship and had all their accounts frozen by the bin Laden family dynasty, he lost the ability to generously support his jihadists.

MUJAHEDIN: Different groups of mujahedin - Muslim guerrilla fighters - were supported by among others the United States, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to fight against the USSR in Afghanistan (1979-89). Saudi Arabian Osama bin Laden built the Tora Bora plant with support from Pakistani intelligence (ISI). Here he could - inspired by Palestinian jihadist theoretician Abdullah Azzam and supported by Egyptian aid Ayman Al-Zawahiri - recruit and train fighters in the jihad (holy war). They also ran an al-Kifah Center (aid office) for jihadists in Peshawar in Pakistan. A number of similar assistance centers were created in the U.S. and Europe.

Al-Qaida:

In Arabic, short-hand for "database". Was founded 17 May 1988 by Osama bin Laden and his closest colleagues.

LEARNING: Al-Qaida offered in their first year training to 10,000 to 20,000 volunteers in several camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They were Arab Afghans, given lessons in fighting techniques, weapons handling and use of explosives in addition to ideological training.

[Harconen]

THE TALIBAN: A CIA & OSAMA BIN LADEN PRODUCTION


Posted By: Phoenix
Date: Saturday, 15-Sep-2001 13:19:55
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?read=11626




        These papers detail the creation of The Taliban by the CIA and Osama Bin Laden and their mutual efforts from 1982 until possibly the present.

        Although the CIA has theoretically been hunting Osama Bin Laden since the 1998 US embassy bombings, the following recent events have been noted:

        1. On 3/19/01 it is reported that The Taliban delivered a letter to Bush. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said he did not know who signed the letter to Bush on behalf of the Taliban.

        http://www.afghanradio.com/news/2001/march/mar20c2001.html

        2. On 5/17/01 Colin Powell announced a gift to The Taliban of $5 million dollars worth of food and $43 million dollars for aid in their anti-drug(?) campaign.

        http://www.robertscheer.com/1_natcolumn/01_columns/052201.htm

        http://www.smh.com.au/news/0105/19/world/world7.html

        3. On 5/25/01 a U.N. panel accused Afghanistan's Taliban rulers of selling opium and heroin to finance its war against northern rebels and to train terrorists.

        http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread9867.shtml

        THIS PROPHETIC SYNOPSIS IS FROM MARK ZAPEZAUER'S BOOK, THE CIAs GREATEST HITS.

        "During the Reagan years, the CIA ran nearly two dozen covert operations against various governments. Of these, Afghanistan was by far the biggest; it was, in fact, the biggest CIA operation of all time, both in terms of dollars spent ($5-$6 billion) and personnel involved. Yet it not only generated little controversy, but enjoyed strong bipartisan support. That's because its main purpose was to "bleed" the Soviet Union, just as we had been bled in Vietnam.

        Prior to the 1979 Russian invasion, Afghanistan was ruled by a brutal dictator. Like the neighboring Shah of Iran, he allowed the CIA to set up radar installations in his country that were used to monitor the Soviets. In 1979, after several dozen Soviet advisors were massacred by Afghan tribesmen, the USSR sent in the Red Army.

        The Soviets tried to install a pliable client regime, without taking local attitudes much into account. Many of the mullahs who controlled chunks of Afghan territory objected to Soviet efforts to educate women and to institute land reform. Others, outraged by the USSR's attempts to suppress the heroin trade, shifted their operations to Pakistan.

        As for the CIA, its aim was simply to humiliate the Soviets by arming anyone who would fight against them. The agency funneled cash and weapons to over a dozen guerrilla groups, many of whom had been staging raids from Pakistan years before the Soviet invasion. Today, long after the Soviet Union left Afghanistan (and, in fact, has ceased to exist), most of these groups are still fighting each other for control of the country.

        Besides tossing billions of dollars into the conflict, the CIA transferred sensitive weapons technology to fanatical Muslim extremists, with consequences that will haunt the US for years to come. One notable veteran of the Afghan operation is Sheik Abdel Rahman, famous for his role in the World Trade Center bombing.

        The CIA succeeded in creating chaos, but never developed a plan for ending it. When the ten-year war was over, a million people were dead, and Afghan heroin had captured 60% of the US market".

[Harconen]

The NLA: Human Rights Fighters or Terrorists?

http://www.macedonia.org/crisis/story2.html


Given the status of the ethnic Albanian minority in the Republic of Macedonia, most Macedonians believe that the KLA/NLA is a group of thugs with the sole intent of further destabilizing the Balkans, not human rights fighters. After all, following the withdrawal of the Yugoslav security forces from Kosovo, virtually all non-Albanians were forced to flee their homes, and Christian monuments were destroyed. Moreover, if the respect for the human rights of ethnic minorities exhibited by the Macedonian authorities is too grave so as to drive a group of people in an armed insurgency for more rights, why then have we not witnessed other ethnic groups in Macedonia following a similar path to that of the so-called NLA, or why have other ethnic minorities in the Balkans - like the Macedonians and Greeks in Albania for instance, who have none of the aforementioned human rights to enjoy and are economically and socially worse off than the Macedonian Albanians - not taken such steps? The KLA/NLA has shady relations with criminal gangs involved in prostitution, drug-traffic and people and weapons smuggling, as well as bin Laden's organization al-Qaeda, links that shed light on what may be the true reason for the armed conflicts initiated by the KLA/NLA, a reason good enough to explain the aforementioned discrepancy between the claims of the ethnic Albanian terrorists and their deeds.

The origins ofthe KLA/NLA are quite interesting. The New York Times reported that the KLA "began on the radical fringe of Kosovar Albanian politics, originally made up of diehard Marxist-Leninists (who were bankrolled in the old days by the Stalinist dictatorship next door in Albania) as well as by descendants of the fascist militias raised by the Italians in World War II." Congressman Ron Paul of Texas stated that "the United States Government has in the past referred to the Kosovo Liberation Army leaders as thugs, terrorists, Marxists, and drug dealers." The Times called the KLA "Marxist-led force funded by dubious sources, including drug money." The US State Department does not even consider the KLA/NLA as freedom fighters, for it states the following regarding their terrorist activities in the 2000 Report on Patterns of Global Terrorism:

In Southeastern Europe, groups of ethnic Albanians have conducted armed attacks against government forces in southern Serbia and in Macedonia since 1999. One group in southern Serbia calls itself the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja, and Bujanovac (PMBLA). One group in Macedonia calls itself the National Liberation Army (NLA). Both groups include members who fought with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1998-99 and have used their wartime connections to obtain funding and weapons from Kosovo and elsewhere. The PMBLA has, on occasion, harassed and detained civilians traveling through areas it controls. Both the PMBLA and the NLA have fired indiscriminately upon civilian centers. (In the same region, ethnic Albanian assailants carried out a terrorist attack against a bus in Kosovo on 16 February 2001, killing at least seven civilians and wounding 43 others.)

In its latest report on international drug trafficking, the U.S. State Department identifies Macedonia as part of the "Balkans Route," the notorious link along which organized crime gangs transport heroin and other drugs from Turkey to Albania and across the Adriatic Sea to Italy. Macedonia is also part of a newer, shorter route on which drugs travel through Kosovo to Western Europe, the report says. The State Department praises the Macedonian government for cooperating with efforts to control drug smuggling. Could it be that the interests of the Albanian Mafia clashed with the Macedonian security forces? The Irish Times reported that according to a leading criminologist "the rebels fighting in the hills of Macedonia and southern Serbia were the paramilitary wing of an Albanian mafia exporting drugs and trafficking in humans to Europe and beyond [...] 'Every mafia needs two things - a safe home territory, and a diaspora. The Albanians now have the diaspora through the refugees from the Kosovo war." The same article quotes Mr. Xavier Raufer, a researcher at the Paris Institute of Criminology and author of The Albanian Mafia, "the latest guerrilla offensives on the margins of the province were a fight to control two key points on a smuggling route known as the 'Balkans Golden Triangle'." Mr. Raufer went on to say in his interview for Radio Netherlands that the "ethnic Albanian rebels fighting in the hills of Macedonia are the paramilitary wing of an Albanian Mafia exporting drugs and trafficking humans to Europe and even further." Similarly, the German newspaper Die Welt am Sonntag reported that "large amounts of money are flowing from organized drug- and people-smuggling in both Kosovo and Macedonia [...]." The same article reports that one of the heads of the Albanian Mafia, who controlled the Central European drug market, financed the terrorists' activities in Tetovo and Kosovo with money from drug sales. After all, The Guardian reported that "Kosovo has become a "smugglers' paradise" supplying up to 40% of the heroin sold in Europe and North America;" the same was confirmed by both Die Berliner Zeitung and Der Hamburger Abendblatt. Jane's reported that "some 70 per cent of the heroin reaching Germany and Switzerland is now reckoned to have been transported through Albania and/or by Albanian groups, and the figure for Greece may be closer to 85 per cent." BBC reported that according to Ray Kendall, the British outgoing Secretary General of Interpol, "at least 80 percent of the heroin entering Western Europe does so through Turkey and the Balkans - with Albanian gangs playing an increasingly important role." BBC also quoted Cataldo Motta, Italian anti-mafia prosecutor saying "Everything passes via the Albanians. The road for drugs and arms and people...is in Albanian hands." Frank J. Cilluffo, Deputy Director of Global Organized Crime and Program director to Counterterrorism Task Force testified before U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary that "the KLA raise part of their funds from the sale of narcotics. Albania and Kosovo lie at the heart of the 'Balkan Route' that links the 'Golden Crescent' of Afghanistan and Pakistan to the drug markets of Europe. This route is worth an estimated $400 billion a year and handles 80 percent of heroin destined for Europe." The Daily Telegraph reported that "Western intelligence officials in Kosovo, Macedonia and Switzerland say Albanian gangs have used at least �3 million of their heroin profits since October last year to buy weapons to re-equip rebels in Macedonia who gave up their weapons to Nato troops last autumn." The same article quotes a Western intelligence official saying that "the rebels in Macedonia, former KLA freedom fighters in Kosovo, and extremist Albanians in southern Serbia are all part of the network of Albanian and Kosovar Albanian families who control criminal networks in Switzerland, Austria, Germany and elsewhere." The Times reported that "the State Department has evidence that the KLA has been involved in drug-smuggling to Europe" and that "the sums collected through the worldwide network of charities cannot compare to the profit made from so-called 'narco-dollars'." The Economist reported that "when police in Oslo made Norway's largest-ever heroin seizure, they discovered that former fighters from the Kosovo Liberation Army controlled the drug-distribution chain. Heroin-dealing in Switzerland is dominated by Albanians." The same article showed the drug routes used by the Taliban to smuggle their heroin into Western Europe; interestingly, one of the routes goes throught the areas of recent violence provoked by the Albanian terrorists. Jane's reported similarly that "the bulk of the financing of the KLA seems to originate from two sources: drug-related operations and Kosovo Albanian settlers in the West." Newsweek reported also of another type of "business" done by the Albanian mafia: "people smuggling. Kurdish refugees from Turkey and Iraq pay as much as $1,000 to be brought by Albanian gangs across the Macedonian or Greek borders."

ABC News reported that the Albanian Mafia, having "a reputation as a ruthless smuggler of weapons, drugs and women," even smuggled underage girls and sold them like slaves in Western Europe, after which it forced them into prostitution. Similarly, in reference to the sex trade controlled mostly by the Albanian Mafia, BBC quoted the former Italian MP, Carol Bebbe Tarantelli, as saying the women "are held in slavery." The Sydney Morning Herald reported that "Albanian clans are funnelling the profits [from sex trade] into the coffers of former Kosovo Liberation Army strongmen who are fighting Serbs in the Presevo Valley and attacking their Slavic neighbours in Macedonia." Similarly, The Sunday Times reporting on the slave traffic practices by the Albanian Mafia, stated: "'Albanian mafia gangs are very vicious,' a recent Home Office report emphasised. 'They make the Italian mafia look like crowd-control officers at a local whist drive.'" The Economist also reported on the fact that Albanian organised crime dominates prostitution in Soho, a fact later confirmed by the Sunday Times too; the Austrian Association of Detectives concludes the same for Hamburg's Reeperbahn, the largest red lights district in Germany, and links between the Albanian Mafia and prostitution rings in Italy were confirmed by the Austrian State Television. The Financial Times reported that "diplomats said the [Albanian] diaspora, which has a significant presence in drugs and prostitution rackets, particularly in Switzerland, Belgium and Germany, is providing financing and weapons to the rebels." The Executive Intelligence Review quotes Michael Levine, former U.S. counter-narcotic agent and one of the most decorated agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), saying in May 1999 the KLA "is tied in with every known Middle and Far Eastern drug cartel. Interpol, Europol, and nearly every European intelligence and counter-narcotics agency has files open on drug syndicates that lead right to the KLA, and right to Albanian gangs ..." Business AM reported that "there was ample evidence available two summers ago about the ties of the so-called Albanian national liberation struggle to organised crime, and how intertwined the Albanian mafia was - and still is - with the political militants."

[Harconen]

So, the obvious question is: what is the connection between the Albanian Mafia and the Albanian terrorists in Macedonia? Newsweek offered an explanation on what is the link between people involved in illegal activities and those initiating violent conflicts: "to the kingpins, peace is bad for business. 'Once you establish the rule of law and start collecting taxes, or import duties, it threatens the smugglers,' says a top police official in Kosovo's capital, Pristina. [...] Drug trafficking has become so prevalent that German and Scandinavian police now say Kosovo Albanians are their countries' leading suppliers of heroin and other drugs. And in Italy, police there say, Albanian gangsters from both Albania and Kosovo are now the leading importers of prostitutes from Eastern Europe and Russia." Similarly, the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, based on confidential sources, reported that the unrest in the area is an absolute advantage for the criminal activities (dirty smuggling deals with illegal drugs, weapons, and women) of the organized crime in the region, headed by UCK fighters. The Economist stated that "this year, much of the money made [from drug sales] went to buy arms for the rebels fighting in Macedonia and a strip of southern Serbia." The Washington Times reported that "National Liberation Army (NLA), a splinter of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), also has another motive: It is fighting to keep control over the region's drug trafficking, which has grown into a large, lucrative enterprise since the Kosovo war." Business AM went on to conclude that "chaos allows the criminals to flourish and, arguably, the militants have no wish for an accord or peace - it would be bad for business." Similarly, the Financial Times reported that the European Union must "crack down on Albanian groups operating in Europe where they increasingly dominate drugs, prostitution and smuggling rings. 'This is where the money is coming from for the weapons. If we cannot tackle the source, how can we ever get out of Kosovo?' said a Nato official."

However, besides shady links to criminal organizations, the KLA/NLA has had strong links with Saudi exile Osama bin Laden and the Taliban regime. Congressman Cunningham of California stated that "the KLA is supported by the mujahedin, Hamas, and even bin Laden." A report by the Republican Policy Committee linked the Albanian terrorists fighting in Macedonia and Kosovo with an extensive Albanian crime network in Europe and terrorist organizations motivated by the ideology of radical Islam, including assets of Osama bin Laden. ABC News reported that "law enforcement officials say that money has gone to fund Muslims fighting in the Balkans and Chechnya, and for attacks on the United States." The Daily Telegraph reported that "fundraising for the KLA [in Great Britain] is believed to centre on the International Islamic Front, founded by Osama bin Laden, the Afghani terrorist leader." The Times reported that "bin Laden's associates are using [a] charity in the US that claims to be supporting Albanian refugees from the war in Kosovo" and that "money raised is filtered back to fighters from the KLA. Some of these fighters have spent time at training camps run by bin Laden." Similarly, BBC reported that charity organizations in Kosovo are suspected to have links to Osama bin Laden. Jane's reported that "the tangled web represented by fundamentalist interests in Afghanistan [...] export drugs to Western Europe using predominantly Albanian and Kosovar networks and assets, including those of the KLA." The Executive Intelligence Review reported that "presently the main axis controlling more than 80% of the heroin market in Europe (plus a growing slice of the heroin market in other areas, including the United States) is the Afghanistan-Kosovo axis. Or better, a Taliban-Kosovo Liberation Army axis." USA Today reported that bin Laden sent units to fight in the Serbian province of Kosovo after having established an Albanian operation in 1994. After all, The Sunday Times reported that bin Laden himself had visited Albania in 1998; the Albanian Telegraphic Agency confirmed the same thing at the time, and the Wall Street Journal Europe and the German newspaper Die Zeit recently reported the same thing. Furthermore, The Sunday Times went on to say that a member of bin Laden's Albanian network "visited Albania to recruit and arm fighters for Kosovo." Similarly, The Times reported that "American intelligence has raised the possibility of a link between Osama bin Laden, the Saudi expatriate blamed for the bombing in August of US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, and the KLA." The Jerusalem Post reported that the ethnic Albanian fighters "are being bolstered by hundreds of Iranian fighters, or Mujahadeen, who infiltrate from nearby Albania and call themselves the Kosovo Liberation Army." The same article went on to say that "US defense officials say the support includes that of Osama bin Laden." The Washington Times claims that "reports said bin Laden's organization, known as al-Qaeda, has both trained and financially supported the KLA." The Sunday Times also reported that "Iranian Revolutionary Guards, supported by the Saudi millionaire, supported the Albanian underground movement in Kosovo, and that members of the al-Gamaa al-Islamiya movement, which killed 58 tourists in Luxor in November of 1998, were in Kosovo." The same article went on to say that "they [Islamic fundamentalists] hope to turn the region into their main base for Islamic armed activity in Europe." Ralf Mutschke of Interpol's Criminal Intelligence Division testified before the House Judicial Committee on December 13 2000 that "In 1998, the U.S. State Department listed the KLA as a terrorist organization, indicating that it was financing its operations with money from the international heroin trade and loans from Islamic countries and individuals, among them allegedly Usama bin Laden. Another link to bin Laden is the fact that the brother of a leader in an Egyptian Djihad organization and also a military commander of Usama bin Laden, was leading an elite KLA unit during the Kosovo conflict." Congressman Brad Sherman acknowledged that the KLA is an "organization that may have alliances with Iran, with Osama Bin Laden, and even with drug dealers." The Washington Times reported that "Islamic radicals, including supporters of bin Laden, have been supporting Albanian rebels fighting in the region, including members of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Intelligence officials have said there are reports that KLA members have been trained at bin Laden training camps in Afghanistan." The newspaper concluded the same thing in a recent follow-up. The Scotsman wrote that the KLA received weapons from bin Laden. Forbes reported that Osama bin Laden "provided training and financial support to Islamic militants among the Bosnian Muslims and the Albanian separatists in Kosovo and Macedonia." The British paper Independent reported that "Interpol believes that Osama bin Laden is linked to Albanian gangs who have taken over a growing web of crime across Europe." BBC reported that according to the US State Department bin Laden might choose to hide in the inaccessible parts of Albania, "using criminal networks which 20 years of "War on Drugs" have been unable to crack." The Scotsman reported that since September 2001 "Albanians operating inside Macedonia are estimated by western intelligence officials to have bought around �3 million worth of weapons ... paid for by Albanian criminals with the proceeds of selling Afghan heroin on the streets of a dozen European capitals."

In conclusion, the respect of the Macedonian state for the rights of all its ethnic minorities, the actions of the Albanian terrorists against Macedonian civilian targets, and the links between the KLA/NLA and confirmed terrorist organizations, cast a shadow of doubt on the claims by the KLA/NLA that they are solely fighting for greater respect for their human rights.

[Harconen]

A Meta-Group Managing Drugs, Violence, and the State

http://oraclesyndicate.twoday.net/stories/2614240/

The Khashoggi Villa Meeting, Kosovo, and the “Pristina Dash” / Part VI

 Peter Dale Scott - Dunlop ignores the implications of the drug backgrounds of Davidovich and Kosman. For example, he acknowledges the presence of four Abkhazians at the meeting – Kosman, “a certain Tsveiba,” Sultan Sosnaliev, and Surikov -- and yet offers no explanation for their presence. (A map will show that Abkhazia is irrelevant to the subsequent events in Dagestan and Chechnya.)

It seems likely that a drug-route was discussed involving Abkhazia, which now “has become a key heroin transiting point.” (1) Its drug-trafficking importance is noted by none other than Surikov himself: “In general then, the Chechen [drug-trafficking] group has allotted a very important place to Abkhazia in its plans….Abkhazia today is one of the most criminalised areas of the former Soviet Union.” (2) The London paper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat has written that Basaev controlled the “Abkhaz heroin road,” used by the Taliban as a transit route to Europe. (3) And (whether or not Basaev was at the Beaulieu meeting) it is certain that Basaev and Surikov were both leaders in the Russian-backed Abkhazian revolt from Georgia in 1991.

empire
9/11 & American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out, edited by David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott, is scheduled to appear in August 2006

The Beaulieu meeting allegedly took place on July 4, 1999, or shortly after the unexpected entry of Russian troops into Kosovo. On June 11, 200 Russian troops drove unexpectedly from Bosnia to Pristina and secured Slatina airport. Gen Wesley Clark then ordered British Gen. Sir Mike Jackson (who was at the scene) “to seize the airport. Jackson responded, famously, that he would not start World War Three for him” (4)

Instead there followed weeks of “protracted negotiations on Russia’s role in the Kosovo peacekeeping mission.” (5) In the end, under circumstances still not fully understood, the United States and NATO agreed that the Russians could stay.

The Russian troops finally withdrew from the airport in July 2003. (6) Significantly, a chart of Russian drug-trafficking prepared by one of Surikov’s partners, Sergei Petrov, indicates that in 2003 Kosovo ceased to be a main point of export for Russian drugs, its place being taken by the Black Sea oil port of Novorossiysk. (7)

Within a year of the troops’ arrival, by 2000, according to DEA statistics, Afghan heroin accounted for almost 20 percent of the heroin seized in the United States – nearly double the percentage taken four years earlier. Much of it was now distributed in America by Kosovar Albanians. (

It is significant therefore that, according to Lilia Shevtsova,

The `Pristina dash’ by Russian parachutists in 1999 during the Kosovo crisis (the purpose of the `dash’ was to force NATO to guarantee for Russia a separate sector of responsibility in Kosovo) was organized by the head of the General Staff, Anatoly Kvashnin, and his deputy, Leonid Ivashov, without the knowledge of minister of defense Igor Sergeyev and most likely without Yeltsin’s knowledge. (9)

Yasenev says nothing about this, but does assert that Kvashnin was the Russian Army connection of the two leading drug traffickers (Vladimir Ilyich Filin and Alexey Likhvintsev) in the Saidov-Surikov group, Far West.

In February 2006 Anton Surikov himself confirmed that the Pristina dash had been prepared for by his meta-group colleague Filin:

When V. I. Filin, who was at that time in Belgrade, learned about the advance of [Russian] peace keepers towards Pristina, he, together with Colonel V. S. Kovalchuk, went to Kosovo on their own risk, unarmed and without bodyguards. They arrived there several hours before our paratroopers. They used this time to get in touch with the field commanders of KLA and received personal guarantees from Hashim Thaci and Ramush Haradinaj that there would be no provocations against the Russian peacekeepers on the part of Albanians. (10)

This was possible because Hashim Thaçi, as we have seen, was advised by Filin’s meta-group partner Yakov Kosman.

Ramush Haradinaj became known as a leading KLA terrorist, war criminal, and drug trafficker. Nevertheless, according to the London Observer, he was also “the key US military and intelligence asset in Kosovo during the civil war.” The Observer also reported UN investigators’ charges that American officials in Kosovo were interfering with an investigation into his war crimes. (11) Today Haradinaj is an indicted war criminal awaiting trial at the Hague War Crimes Tribunal. (12)

It may be relevant that Rusham Haradinaj’s brother Daut, another alleged drug trafficker, is said to have been placed by their KLA faction

in charge of coordinating operations with the Islamic terrorist organization Al Qaeda. In that capacity, he organized a meeting with Muhamed Al Zawahiri, brother of the ideological leader of the aforementioned organization Dr. Ayman Al Zawahiri, in Sofia in October 2001. (13)

The meeting probably concerned the KLA offshoot fighting in Macedonia, the NLA, which was led by Muhamed al-Zawahiri and overseen by former KLA leader Agim Ceku, another U.S. ally and indicted war criminal, (14) later chief of the KLA’s successor, the KPC (where Daut Haradinaj was his deputy). In 2001 the Washington Times reported, "Osama bin Laden is the biggest financial supporter of the National Liberation Army (NLA) in Macedonia." (15) Other sources claimed that the American company Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI), which had trained Ceku in first Croatia and then Bosnia, provided the 17 American instructors which (according to the Hamburger Abendblatt) were training and assisting the NLA in Macedonia. (16)

Daut and Ramush Haradinaj are accused of using their smuggling activities to finance the flow of arms to the NLA in Macedonia, and Daut of participating personally in NLA attacks. (17) Though they profit from other smuggled commodities, notably cigarettes, it would appear that the Pristina Dash may have helped provide narco-financing for Islamist insurrection in Macedonia.

This possibility is reinforced by the Yasenev version of the meta-group’s politics, which he portrays as Islamist and anti-Russian, rather than pro-Putin.

Footnotes:
1: SIDA/Cornell Caspian Consulting, “The South Caucasus: A Regional Overview,” 2002.

2: Anton Surikov, Crime in Russia, 38-39.

3: Paul Murphy, The Wolves of Islam: Russia and the Faces of Chechen Terror (Washington: Brassey’s Inc., 2004), 136.

4: Tim Judah, Kosovo: War and Revenge (New Haven: Yale UP, 2002), 279, 284-85.

5: Toronto Sun, 6/27/99.

6: Pravda.ru, 7/3/03.

7: The map was allegedly shown by Surikov’s partner Sergei Petrov to a Russian businessman in Geneva while discussing a drug deal

8: Peter Klebnikov, “Heroin Heroes,” Mother Jones, January/February 2000, Peter Dale Scott, “Deep Politics: Drugs, Oil, Covert Operations and Terrorism,”

9: Shevtsova, Putin’s Russia, 285, fn. 11. That Yeltsin was ignorant has been disputed. But a Sky journalist heard in Kosovo, from “a man who `freelances’ as a go-between for Moscow,” that “the army took the decision to move without consulting the politicians” (Tim Marshall, Shadowplay [Beograd : Samizdat B92, 2003], 153)

10: Anton Surikov, Pravda-info, 2/8/06,

11:
Nick Wood, “US 'covered up' for Kosovo ally,” Observer, 9/10/00,: Cf. Agence France Presse - English, 10/25/00.

12: Baltimore Sun, 5/10/06.

13: “Daut Haradinaj,” in “Kosovo's 156 lawless: Biographies of the men in the Albanian-dominated Serbian province of Kosovo,” Serbianna.. Daut Haradinaj was blacklisted by President Bush as an Albanian terrorist in an Executive Order of July 1, 2001. See “The US Black List of Albanian Terrorists,”
14: Halifax Herald, 9/10/01.

15: Washington Times, 7/22/01.

16: Christopher Deliso, “US Betrayed Us In Macedonia,” Antiwar.com, 6/26/02. Cf. London Times, 9/3/01. In Croatia, Agim Ceku and other MPRI trainees were accused of ethnic cleansing in the forced Serbian evacuation of the Krajina.

17: “Ramush Haradinaj,” in “Kosovo's 156 lawless: Biographies of the men in the Albanian-dominated Serbian province of Kosovo,” Serbianna..

[Harconen]

U.S. supported al-Qaeda cells during Balkan Wars
Fought serbian troops

Isabel Vincent
National Post

Original Link:  http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/story.html?f=/stories/20020315/344843.html

Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network has been active in the Balkans for years, most recently helping Kosovo rebels battle for independence from Serbia with the financial and military backing of the United States and NATO.

The claim that al-Qaeda played a role in the Balkan wars of the 1990s came from an alleged FBI document former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic presented in his defence before the Hague tribunal last week. Mr. Milosevic faces 66 counts of war crimes and genocide.

Although Hague prosecutors have challenged the veracity of the document, which Mr. Milosevic identified as a Congressional statement from the FBI dated last December, Balkan experts say the presence of al-Qaeda militants in Kosovo and Bosnia is well documented.

Today, al-Qaeda members are helping the National Liberation Army, a rebel group in Macedonia, fight the Skopje government in a bid for independence, military analysts say. Last week, Michael Steiner, the United Nations administrator in Kosovo, warned of "importing the Afghan danger to Europe" because several cells trained and financed by al-Qaeda remain in the region.

"Many members of the Kosovo Liberation Army were sent for training in terrorist camps in Afghanistan," said James Bissett, former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia and an expert on the Balkans. "Milosevic is right. There is no question of their participation in conflicts in the Balkans. It is very well documented."

The arrival in the Balkans of the so-called Afghan Arabs, who are from various Middle Eastern states and linked to al-Qaeda, began in 1992 soon after the war in Bosnia. According to Lenard Cohen, professor of political science at Simon Fraser University, mujahedeen fighters who travelled to Afghanistan to resist the Soviet occupation in the 1980s later "migrated to Bosnia hoping to assist their Islamic brethren in a struggle against Serbian [and for a time] Croatian forces."

The Bosnian Muslims welcomed their assistance. After the Bosnian war, "hundreds of Bosnian passports were provided to the mujahedeen by the Muslim-controlled government in Sarajevo," said Prof. Cohen in a recent article titled Bin Laden and the war in the Balkans. Many al-Qaeda members decided to stay in the region after marrying local Muslim women, he said.

They also set up secret terrorist training camps in Bosnia -- activities financed by the sale of opium produced in Afghanistan and secretly shipped through Turkey and Kosovo into central Europe.

In the years immediately before the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the al-Qaeda militants moved into Kosovo, the southern province of Serbia, to help ethnic Albanian extremists of the KLA mount their terrorist campaign against Serb targets in the region.

The mujahedeen "were financed by Saudi and United Arab Emirates money," said one Western military official, asking anonymity. "They were mercenaries who were not running the show in Kosovo, but were used by the KLA to do their dirty work."

The United States, which had originally trained the Afghan Arabs during the war in Afghanistan, supported them in Bosnia and then in Kosovo. When NATO forces launched their military campaign against Yugoslavia three years ago to unseat Mr. Milosevic, they entered the Kosovo conflict on the side of the KLA, which had already received "substantial" military and financial support from bin Laden's network, analysts say.

In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes on the United States, NATO began to worry about the presence in the Balkans of the Islamist terrorist cells it had supported throughout the 1990s.

[Harconen]

"OSAMAGATE"

by Michel Chossudovsky
Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO110A.html

Confronted with mounting evidence, the US Administration can no longer deny its links to Osama. While the CIA admits that Osama bin Laden was an "intelligence asset" during the Cold War, the relationship is said to "go way back". Most news reports consider that these Osama-CIA links belong to the "bygone era" of the Soviet-Afghan war. They are invariably viewed as "irrelevant" to an understanding of present events. Lost in the barrage of recent history, the role of the CIA in supporting and developing international terrorist organisations during the Cold war and its aftermath is casually ignored or downplayed by the Western media.
Yes, We did support Him, but "He Went Against Us"

A blatant example of media distortion is the so-called "blowback" thesis: "intelligence assets" are said to "have gone against their sponsors"; "what we've created blows back in our face."1 In a twisted logic, the US government and the CIA are portrayed as the ill-fated victims:

    The sophisticated methods taught to the Mujahideen, and the thousands of tons of arms supplied to them by the US - and Britain - are now tormenting the West in the phenomenon known as `blowback', whereby a policy strategy rebounds on its own devisers. 2

The US media, nonetheless, concedes that "the Taliban's coming to power [in 1995] is partly the outcome of the U.S. support of the Mujahideen, the radical Islamic group, in the 1980s in the war against the Soviet Union".3 But it also readily dismisses its own factual statements and concludes in chorus, that the CIA had been tricked by a deceitful Osama. It's like "a son going against his father".

The "blowback" thesis is a fabrication. The evidence amply confirms that the CIA never severed its ties to the "Islamic Militant Network". Since the end of the Cold War, these covert intelligence links have not only been maintained, they have in become increasingly sophisticated.

New undercover initiatives financed by the Golden Crescent drug trade were set in motion in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Balkans. Pakistan's military and intelligence apparatus (controlled by the CIA) essentially "served as a catalyst for the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of six new Muslim republics in Central Asia." 4
Replicating the Iran Contragate Pattern

Remember Ollie North and the Nicaraguan Contras under the Reagan Administration when weapons financed by the drug trade were channeled to "freedom fighters" in Washington's covert war against the Sandinista government. The same pattern was used in the Balkans to arm and equip the Mujahideen fighting in the ranks of the Bosnian Muslim army against the Armed Forces of the Yugoslav Federation.

Throughout the 1990s, the Pakistan Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) was used by the CIA as a go-between -- to channel weapons and Mujahideen mercenaries to the Bosnian Muslim Army in the civil war in Yugoslavia. According to a report of the London based International Media Corporation:

    "Reliable sources report that the United States is now [1994] actively participating in the arming and training of the Muslim forces of Bosnia-Herzegovina in direct contravention of the United Nations accords. US agencies have been providing weapons made in ... China (PRC), North Korea (DPRK) and Iran. The sources indicated that ... Iran, with the knowledge and agreement of the US Government, supplied the Bosnian forces with a large number of multiple rocket launchers and a large quantity of ammunition. These included 107mm and 122mm rockets from the PRC, and VBR-230 multiple rocket launchers ... made in Iran. ... It was [also] reported that 400 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (Pasdaran) arrived in Bosnia with a large supply of arms and ammunition. It was alleged that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had full knowledge of the operation and that the CIA believed that some of the 400 had been detached for future terrorist operations in Western Europe.

    During September and October [1994], there has been a stream of "Afghan" Mujahedin ... covertly landed in Ploce, Croatia (South-West of Mostar) from where they have traveled with false papers ... before deploying with the Bosnian Muslim forces in the Kupres, Zenica and Banja Luka areas. These forces have recently [late 1994] experienced a significant degree of military success. They have, according to sources in Sarajevo, been aided by the UNPROFOR Bangladesh battalion, which took over from a French battalion early in September [1994].

    The Mujahedin landing at Ploce are reported to have been accompanied by US Special Forces equipped with high-tech communications equipment, ... The sources said that the mission of the US troops was to establish a command, control, communications and intelligence network to coordinate and support Bosnian Muslim offensives -- in concert with Mujahideen and Bosnian Croat forces -- in Kupres, Zenica and Banja Luka. Some offensives have recently been conducted from within the UN-established safe-havens in the Zenica and Banja Luka regions.

    (...)

    The US Administration has not restricted its involvement to the clandestine contravention of the UN arms embargo on the region ... It [also] committed three high-ranking delegations over the past two years [prior to 1994] in failed attempts to bring the Yugoslav Government into line with US policy. Yugoslavia is the only state in the region to have failed to acquiesce to US pressure.5

"From the Horse's Mouth"

Ironically, the US Administration's undercover military-intelligence operations in Bosnia have been fully documented by the Republican Party. A lengthy Congressional report by the Republican Party Committee (RPC) published in 1997, largely confirms the International Media Corporation report quoted above. The RPC Congressional report accuses the Clinton administration of having "helped turn Bosnia into a militant Islamic base" leading to the recruitment through the so-called "Militant Islamic Network," of thousands of Mujahideen from the Muslim world:

    Perhaps most threatening to the SFOR mission - and more importantly, to the safety of the American personnel serving in Bosnia - is the unwillingness of the Clinton Administration to come clean with the Congress and with the American people about its complicity in the delivery of weapons from Iran to the Muslim government in Sarajevo. That policy, personally approved by Bill Clinton in April 1994 at the urging of CIA Director-designate (and then-NSC chief) Anthony Lake and the U.S. ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith, has, according to the Los Angeles Times (citing classified intelligence community sources), "played a central role in the dramatic increase in Iranian influence in Bosnia.

    (...)

    Along with the weapons, Iranian Revolutionary Guards and VEVAK intelligence operatives entered Bosnia in large numbers, along with thousands of mujahedin ("holy warriors") from across the Muslim world. Also engaged in the effort were several other Muslim countries (including Brunei, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Turkey) and a number of radical Muslim organizations. For example, the role of one Sudan-based "humanitarian organization," called the Third World Relief Agency, has been well documented. The Clinton Administration's "hands-on" involvement with the Islamic network's arms pipeline included inspections of missiles from Iran by U.S. government officials... the Third World Relief Agency (TWRA), a Sudan-based, phoney humanitarian organization ... has been a major link in the arms pipeline to Bosnia. ... TWRA is believed to be connected with such fixtures of the Islamic terror network as Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman (the convicted mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing) and Osama Bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi émigré believed to bankroll numerous militant groups. [Washington Post, 9/22/96] 6

Complicity of the Clinton Administration

In other words, the Republican Party Committee report confirms unequivocally the complicity of the Clinton Administration with several Islamic fundamentalist organisations including Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda.

The Republicans wanted at the time to undermine the Clinton Administration. However, at a time when the entire country had its eyes riveted on the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the Republicans no doubt chose not to trigger an untimely "Iran-Bosniagate" affair, which might have unduly diverted public attention away from the Lewinsky scandal. The Republicans wanted to impeach Bill Clinton "for having lied to the American People" regarding his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. On the more substantive "foreign policy lies" regarding drug running and covert operations in the Balkans, Democrats and Republicans agreed in unison, no doubt pressured by the Pentagon and the CIA not to "spill the beans".
From Bosnia to Kosovo

The "Bosnian pattern" described in the 1997 Congressional RPC report was replicated in Kosovo. With the complicity of NATO and the US State Department. Mujahideen mercenaries from the Middle East and Central Asia were recruited to fight in the ranks of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1998-99, largely supporting NATO's war effort.

Confirmed by British military sources, the task of arming and training of the KLA had been entrusted in 1998 to the US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) and Britain's Secret Intelligence Services MI6, together with "former and serving members of 22 SAS [Britain's 22nd Special Air Services Regiment], as well as three British and American private security companies".7

    The US DIA approached MI6 to arrange a training programme for the KLA, said a senior British military source. `MI6 then sub-contracted the operation to two British security companies, who in turn approached a number of former members of the (22 SAS) regiment. Lists were then drawn up of weapons and equipment needed by the KLA.' While these covert operations were continuing, serving members of 22 SAS Regiment, mostly from the unit's D Squadron, were first deployed in Kosovo before the beginning of the bombing campaign in March. 8

While British SAS Special Forces in bases in Northern Albania were training the KLA, military instructors from Turkey and Afghanistan financed by the "Islamic jihad" were collaborating in training the KLA in guerilla and diversion tactics.9:

    Bin Laden had visited Albania himself. He was one of several fundamentalist groups that had sent units to fight in Kosovo, ... Bin Laden is believed to have established an operation in Albania in 1994 ... Albanian sources say Sali Berisha, who was then president, had links with some groups that later proved to be extreme fundamentalists. 10

Congressional Testimonies on KLA-Osama links

According to Frank Ciluffo of the Globalized Organised Crime Program, in a testimony presented to the House of Representatives Judicial Committee:

    What was largely hidden from public view was the fact that the KLA raise part of their funds from the sale of narcotics. Albania and Kosovo lie at the heart of the "Balkan Route" that links the "Golden Crescent" of Afghanistan and Pakistan to the drug markets of Europe. This route is worth an estimated $400 billion a year and handles 80 percent of heroin destined for Europe. 11

According to Ralf Mutschke of Interpol's Criminal Intelligence division also in a testimony to the House Judicial Committee:

    The U.S. State Department listed the KLA as a terrorist organization, indicating that it was financing its operations with money from the international heroin trade and loans from Islamic countries and individuals, among them allegedly Usama bin Laden" . Another link to bin Laden is the fact that the brother of a leader in an Egyptian Jihad organization and also a military commander of Usama bin Laden, was leading an elite KLA unit during the Kosovo conflict. 12

Madeleine Albright Covets the KLA

These KLA links to international terrorism and organised crime documented by the US Congress were totally ignored by the Clinton Administration. In fact, in the months preceding the bombing of Yugoslavia, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was busy building a "political legitimacy" for the KLA. The paramilitary army had --from one day to the next-- been elevated to the status of a bona fide "democratic" force in Kosovo. In turn, Madeleine Albright has forced the pace of international diplomacy: the KLA had been spearheaded into playing a central role in the failed "peace negotiations" at Rambouiillet in early 1999.
The Senate and the House tacitly endorse State Terrorism

While the various Congressional reports confirmed that the US government had been working hand in glove with Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda, this did not prevent the Clinton and later the Bush Administration from arming and equipping the KLA. The Congressional documents also confirm that members of the Senate and the House knew the relationship of the Administration to international terrorism. To quote the statement of Rep. John Kasich of the House Armed Services Committee: "We connected ourselves [in 1998-99] with the KLA, which was the staging point for bin Laden..." 13

In the wake of the tragic events of September 11, Republicans and Democrats in unison have given their full support to the President to "wage war on Osama".

In 1999, Senator Jo Lieberman had stated authoritatively that "Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human rights and American values." In the hours following the October 7 missile attacks on Afghanistan, the same Jo Lieberman called for punitive air strikes against Iraq: "We're in a war against terrorism... We can't stop with bin Laden and the Taliban." Yet Senator Jo Lieberman, as member of the Armed Services Committee of the Senate had access to all the Congressional documents pertaining to "KLA-Osama" links. In making this statement, he was fully aware that that agencies of the US government as well as NATO were supporting international terrorism.
The War in Macedonia

In the wake of the 1999 war in Yugoslavia, the terrorist activities of the KLA were extended into Southern Serbia and Macedonia. Meanwhile, the KLA --renamed the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC)-- was elevated to United Nations status, implying the granting of "legitimate" sources of funding through United Nations as well as through bilateral channels, including direct US military aid.

And barely two months after the official inauguration of the KPC under UN auspices (September 1999), KPC-KLA commanders - using UN resources and equipment - were already preparing the assaults into Macedonia, as a logical follow-up to their terrorist activities in Kosovo. According to the Skopje daily Dnevnik, the KPC had established a "sixth operation zone" in Southern Serbia and Macedonia:

    Sources, who insist on anonymity, claim that the headquarters of the Kosovo protection brigades [i.e. linked to the UN sponsored KPC] have [March 2000] already been formed in Tetovo, Gostivar and Skopje. They are being prepared in Debar and Struga [on the border with Albania] as well, and their members have defined codes. 14

According to the BBC, "Western special forces were still training the guerrillas" meaning that they were assisting the KLA in opening up "a sixth operation zone" in Southern Serbia and Macedonia. 15
"The Islamic Militant Network" and NATO join hands in Macedonia

Among the foreign mercenaries now fighting in Macedonia (October 2001) in the ranks of self-proclaimed National Liberation Army (NLA), are Mujahideen from the Middle East and the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Also within the KLA's proxy force in Macedonia are senior US military advisers from a private mercenary outfit on contract to the Pentagon as well as "soldiers of fortune" from Britain, Holland and Germany. Some of these Western mercenaries had previously fought with the KLA and the Bosnian Muslim Army. 16

Extensively documented by the Macedonian press and statements of the Macedonian authorities, the US government and the "Islamic Militant Network" are working hand in glove in supporting and financing the self-proclaimed National Liberation Army (NLA), involved in the terrorist attacks in Macedonia. The NLA is a proxy of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In turn the KLA and the UN sponsored Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC) are identical institutions with the same commanders and military personnel. KPC Commanders on UN salaries are fighting in the NLA together with the Mujahideen.

In a bitter twist, while supported and financed by Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda, the KLA-NLA is also supported by NATO and the United Nations mission to Kosovo (UNMIK). In fact, the "Islamic Militant Network" --also using Pakistan's Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) as the CIA's go-between-- still constitutes an integral part of Washington's covert military-intelligence operations in Macedonia and Southern Serbia.

The KLA-NLA terrorists are funded from US military aid, the United Nations peace-keeping budget as well as by several Islamic organisations including Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda. Drug money is also being used to finance the terrorists with the complicity of the US government. The recruitment of Mujahideen to fight in the ranks of the NLA in Macedonia is implemented through various Islamic groups.

US military advisers mingle with Mujahideen within the same paramilitary force, Western mercenaries from NATO countries fight alongside Mujahideen recruited in the Middle East and Central Asia. And the US media calls this a "blowback" where so-called "intelligence assets" have gone against their sponsors!

But this did not happen during the Cold war! It is happening right now in Macedonia. And it is confirmed by numerous press reports, eyewitness accounts, photographic evidence as well as official statements by the Macedonian Prime Minister, who has accused the Western military alliance of supporting the terrorists. Moreover, the official Macedonian New Agency (MIA) has pointed to the complicity between Washington's envoy Ambassador James Pardew and the NLA terrorists. 17 In other words, the so-called "intelligence assets" are still serving the interests of their US sponsors.

Pardew's background is revealing in this regard. He started his Balkans career in 1993 as a senior intelligence officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff responsible for channeling US aid to the Bosnian Muslim Army. Coronel Pardew had been put in charge of arranging the "air-drops" of supplies to Bosnian forces. At the time, these "air drops" were tagged as "civilian aid". It later transpired --confirmed by the RPC Congressional report-- that the US had violated the arms embargo. And James Pardew played an important role as part of the team of intelligence officials working closely with the Chairman of the National Security Council Anthony Lake.

Pardew was later involved in the Dayton negotiations (1995) on behalf of the US Defence Department. In 1999, prior to the bombing of Yugoslavia, he was appointed "Special Representative for Military Stabilisation and Kosovo Implementation" by President Clinton. One of his tasks was to channel support to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which at the time was also being supported by Osama bin Laden. Pardew was in this regard instrumental in replicating the "Bosnian pattern" in Kosovo and subsequently in Macedonia...
Justification for Waging War

The Bush Administration has stated that it has proof that Osama bin Laden is behind the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon. In the words of British Prime Minister Tony Blair: "I have seen absolutely powerful and incontrovertible evidence of his [Osama] link to the events of the 11th of September." 18 What Tony Blair fails to mention is that agencies of the US government including the CIA continue to "harbor" Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda.

A major war supposedly "against international terrorism" has been launched by a government which is harboring international terrorism as part of its foreign policy agenda. In other words, the main justification for waging war has been totally fabricated. The American people have been deliberately and consciously misled by their government into supporting a major military adventure which affects our collective future.

This decision to mislead the American people was taken barely a few hours after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre. Without supporting evidence, Osama had already been tagged as the "prime suspect." Two days later on Thursday the 13th of September --while the FBI investigations had barely commenced-- President Bush pledged to "lead the world to victory". The Administration confirmed its intention to embark on "a sustained military campaign rather than a single dramatic action" directed against Osama bin Laden. 19 In addition to Afghanistan, a number of countries in the Middle East were mentioned as possible targets including Iraq, Iran, Libya and the Sudan. And several prominent US political figures and media pundits have demanded that the air strikes be extended to other countries "which harbour international terrorism." According to intelligence sources, Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda has operations in some 50 to 60 countries providing ample pretext to intervene in several "rogue states" in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Moreover, the entire US Legislature --with only one honest and courageous dissenting voice in the House of Representatives-- has tacitly endorsed the Administration's decision to go war. Members of the House and the Senate have access through the various committees to official confidential reports and intelligence documents which prove beyond doubt that agencies of the US government have ties to international terrorism. They cannot say "we did not know". In fact, most of this evidence is in the public domain.

Under the historical resolution of the US Congress adopted by both the House and the Senate on the 14th of September:

    The president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

Whereas there is no evidence that agencies of the US government "aided the terrorist attacks" on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, there is ample and detailed evidence that agencies of the US government as well as NATO, have since the end of the Cold War continued to "harbor such organizations".

Patriotism cannot be based on a falsehood, particularly when it constitutes a pretext for waging war and killing innocent civilians.

Ironically, the text of the Congressional resolution also constitutes a "blowback" against the US sponsors of international terrorism. The resolution does not exclude the conduct of an "Osamagate" inquiry, as well as appropriate actions against agencies and/or individuals of the US government, who may have collaborated with Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda. And the evidence indelibly points directly to the Bush Administration.
Notes

   1. United Press International (UPI), 15 September 2001.
   2. The Guardian, London, 15 September 2001.
   3. UPI, op cit,
   4. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Who is Osama bin Laden, Centre for Research on Globalisation, 12 September 2001, http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.html.
   5. International Media Corporation Defense and Strategy Policy, US Commits Forces, Weapons to Bosnia, London, 31 October 1994.
   6. Congressional Press Release, Republican Party Committee (RPC), US Congress, Clinton-Approved Iranian Arms Transfers Help Turn Bosnia into Militant Islamic Base, 16 January 1997, available on the website of the Centre of Research on Globalisation (CRG) at http://globalresearch.ca/articles/DCH109A.html. The original document is on the website of the US Senate Republican Party Committee (Senator Larry Craig), at http://www.senate.gov/~rpc/releases/1997/iran.htm)
   7. The Scotsman, Glasgow, 29 August 1999.
   8. Ibid.
   9. Truth in Media, Kosovo in Crisis, Phoenix, Arizona, 2 April 1999
  10. Sunday Times, London, 29 November 1998.
  11. US Congress, Testimony of Frank J. Cilluffo , Deputy Director, Global Organized Crime, Program director to the House Judiciary Committee, 13 December 2000.
  12. US Congress, Testimony of Ralf Mutschke of Interpol's Criminal Intelligence Division, to the House Judicial Committee, 13 December 2000.
  13. US Congress, Transcripts of the House Armed Services Committee, 5 October 1999,
  14. Macedonian Information Centre Newsletter, Skopje, 21 March 2000, published by BBC Summary of World Broadcast, 24 March 2000.
  15. BBC, 29 January 2001, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1142000/1142478.stm)
  16. Scotland on Sunday, Glasgow, 15 June 2001 at http://www.scotlandonsunday.com/text_only.cfm?id=SS01025960, see also UPI, 9 July 2001. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Washington behind Terrorist Assaults in Macedonia, Centre for Research on Globalisation, August 2001, at http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO108B.html.)
  17. Macedonian Information Agency (MIA), 26 September 2001, available at the Centre for Research on Globalisation at http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MNA110A.html
  18. Quoted in The Daily Telegraph, London, 1 October 2001.
  19. Statement by official following the speech by President George Bush on 14 September 2001 quoted in the International Herald Tribune, Paris, 14 September 2001.

[Harconen]

Blic: Osama bin Laden tried to buy anti-aircraft missiles in Belgrade in 1986

12 January 2010 | 13:11 | FOCUS News Agency
http://www.focus-fen.net/?id=n206474

Belgrade.  Using some illegal channels and through a representative of Genex company, Osama bin Laden was at the state-run SDPR weapons production company in Belgrade in
June 1986 as a weapons trader with a deep pocket, placing an order for a broad variety of items, including anti-aircraft missiles, Serbian Blic newspaper writes on Tuesday.
SDPR, a state-run company dealing with arms trade, considered the deal illegal and refused to realize it, requiring an official document proving the end-user of the weapons, Blic comments further.


The total value of the order was of USD 100 million but Bin Laden wanted to avoid the official procedure and not to present any kind of document. Blic source says that the negotiations ended before being started at the lowest level of company’s management.
At that time the position of former Yugoslavia in the world arms trade market was strong, while the profits – more then serious, and thus Bin Laden’s offer was not so tempting, the newspaper says.


Zagreb-based newspaper Vecernji List also writes on the issue, saying that after Belgrade Osama bin Laden headed to Zagreb, where he entered into negotiations with Beobank. The newspaper also writes that after the war in Afghanistan ended up, Bin Laden founded a humanitarian organization in Zagreb, called Al Kifah, which was used to transfer mujahidins into Bosnia.

[Harconen]

Osama Bin Laden And Bosnian Al Qaeda

dr Darko Trifunovic
http://www.getacd.org/listen_V0aZKcB1nCc/dr_darko_trifunovic_osama_bin_laden_and_bosnian_al_qaeda

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0aZKcB1nCc&feature=player_embedded


Bin Laden visits Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic in Sarajevo. He sponsors some fighters from Arabic countries to fight on the Muslims' side in Bosnia. [New York Times, 10/20/2003] Izetbegovic gives bin Laden a Bosnian passport the same year as a gesture of appreciation for his support (see 1993). A CIA report in 1996 will conclude bin Laden did visit the Balkans region in 1993, though it will not definitively state he went to Bosnia. [Gunaratna, 2003, pp. 176, 340] Bin Laden will also visit Izetbegovic in 1994 (see November 1994 and 1994).1993: Bosnian President Izetbegovic Grants Bin Laden Passport as Gesture of Appreciation
Edit event

Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic grants Osama bin Laden a Bosnian passport "in recognition of his followers' contributions to Mr. Izetbegovic's quest to create a 'fundamentalist Islamic republic' in the Balkans," according to an account in a Bosnian newspaper in 1999. [Ottawa Citizen, 12/15/2001] Renate Flottau, a reporter for Der Spiegel, will later claim that bin Laden told her he had been given a Bosnian passport when she happened to meet him in Bosnia in 1994 (see 1994). [Schindler, 2007, pp. 123-125]

Entity Tags: Renate Flottau, Alija Izetbegovic, Osama bin Laden

Timeline Tags: Western Support for Islamic Militancy, Complete 911 Timeline
AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget
1993-1995: Mujaheddin Reach a Peak of Up to 4,000 in Bosnia
Edit event

The caption for this picture published in newspapers on December 11, 1995, reads, "One of the Bosnian Army Muslim brigades marches through Zenica in a demonstration of strength by 10,000 soldiers."The caption for this picture published in newspapers on December 11, 1995, reads, "One of the Bosnian Army Muslim brigades marches through Zenica in a demonstration of strength by 10,000 soldiers." [Source: Reuters] (click image to enlarge)The number of Mujaheddin fighting in Bosnia plateau at around several thousand. Estimates of mujaheddin numbers in Bosnia vary from as few as a couple of hundred to as many as 4,000. However, most put the number somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000. The difficulty in pinning down an exact figure stems from fact that there are a variety of foreign mercenary groups in Bosnia and it is not entirely clear who is and who isn't mujaheddin. Furthermore, these groups are not all present in Bosnia at the same time. According to Cees Wiebes, a professor at Amsterdam University, mujaheddin forces in Bosnia are not controlled by Bosnian authorities, but rather by their countries of origin, Islamic militant organizations, and criminal organizations. [Wiebes, 2003, pp. 207-208] While the mujaheddin's presence in Bosnia is said to be of only limited military value, they are considered a valuable "political tool" for obtaining the support from Arab countries. According to a UN report, Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic sees the fighters as "a conduit for funds from the Gulf and the Middle East."

[Harconen]

Bosnia: The Birthplace of Al-Qaeda

Jihad Watch ^  | 9 July 2005 | Stella L. Jatras
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1439767/posts

Stella L. Jatras details jihadist activity in Bosnia and some of its implications:

A series of bombs devasted London; the number of casualties numbered more than 40, 13 of whom died in a bus attack. An al-Qaeda group is linked to the London blasts: AP reports, "A group calling itself 'Secret Organization — al-Qaeda in Europe' has posted a claim of responsibility for the series of blasts in London according to a report in Der Spiegel."

Evan F. Kohlmann, author of Al-Qaeda's Jihad in Europe: The Afghan-Bosnian Network, argues that the "key to understanding Al Qaida’s European cells lies in the Bosnian war of the 1990s. Using the Bosnian war as their cover, Afghan-trained Islamic militants loyal to Osama bin Laden convened in the Balkans in 1992 to establish a European domestic terrorist infrastructure in order to plot their violent strikes against the United States. As the West and the United Nations looked on with disapproval, the fanatic foreign 'mujahideen', or holy warriors, wreaked havoc across southern Europe, taking particular aim at UN peacekeepers and even openly fighting with Bosnian Muslims at times. Middle Eastern religious and charitable organizations, largely based in and funded from the Arabian Gulf, were responsible for bankrolling this effort, and providing travel documentation for would-be mujahideen recruits." Kohlmann adds that "many of the cell members – responsible for some of the most notorious terrorist attacks of the past decade – spent their formative years waging jihad in the unlikely Muslim land of Bosnia."

Therefore, it is safe to say that the birth of al-Qaeda as a force on the world stage can be traced directly back to 1992, when the Bosnian Muslim government of Alija Izetbegovic issued a passport in the Vienna embassy to Osama bin Laden. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2001 that "for the past 10 years, the most senior leaders of al Qaeda have visited the Balkans, including bin Laden himself on three occasions between 1994 and 1996. The Egyptian surgeon turned terrorist leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri has operated terrorist training camps, weapons of mass destruction factories and money-laundering and drug-trading networks throughout Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Bosnia. This has gone on for a decade. Many recruits to the Balkan wars came originally from Chechnya, a jihad in which Al Qaeda has also played a part."

THE BOSNIA/911 CONNECTION

An AP article of 2002 entitled, "U.N.Lawyer Turns Over Hijacker Info," reported that "the chief U.N war crimes prosecutor has turned over information about one of the Sept. 11 hijackers to the United States, France and the Netherlands, the U.N. spokesman said Wednesday...The war crimes prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, said last October that information concerning people with connections to terrorist groups, primarily in Bosnia, was provided to Pierre Prosper, the U.S. ambassador at large for war crimes.

"On Wednesday, [UN Spokesman] Eckhard confirmed for the first time that the information included material related to 'one of the named terrorists said to have been on one of the hijacked aircraft' on Sept. 11. Eckhard refused to name the hijacker but said the information was also shared with the French and Dutch governments."

The report further states that "following the terrorist attacks on the United States, Del Ponte was approached by the U.S. Embassy in The Hague, Netherlands and asked for information in identifying those responsible, Eckhard said. The office of the prosecutor did in fact have some information in relation to one of the named terrorists said to have been on one of the hijacked aircraft, he said. An electronic version of some of the information was then given to Prosper as well as French and Dutch officials, Eckhard said.

"Florence Hartmann, the spokeswoman for Del Ponte, said U.N. investigators may have had information about some Muslim fighters who stayed on in Bosnia after the civil war ended in 1995."

Moreover, Gregory R. Copley, editor of Defense & Foreign Affairs, writes: "The Islamist-dominated Government of Bosnia & Herzegovina (B-H) is proposing as its new Ambassador to the United States a woman who was one of the founders of the radical Islamist Muslim SDA Party (Party of Democratic Action [Stranka Demokratske Akcije]), which has had, since its foundation, strong links with al-Qaida and a variety of other Islamist terrorist organizations, and to the intelligence and terrorist-training arms of the Iranian Government."

In his commentary, "We bombed the wrong side?" former Canadian UNPROFOR Commander Lewis MacKenzie wrote, "The Kosovo-Albanians have played us like a Stradivarius. We have subsidized and indirectly supported their violent campaign for an ethnically pure and independent Kosovo. We have never blamed them for being the perpetrators of the violence in the early '90s and we continue to portray them as the designated victim today in spite of evidence to the contrary. When they achieve independence with the help of our tax dollars combined with those of bin Laden and al-Qaeda, just consider the message of encouragement this sends to other terrorist-supported independence movements around the world."

I repeat these words of General MacKenzie: "Just consider the message of encouragement this sends to other terrorist-supported independence movements around the world." (My emphasis)

WE HAD HIM!

In his book, Dereliction of Duty, Lt. Col. Robert "Buzz" Patterson, chief military aide to President Clinton writes: "The White House Situation Room was buzzing. It was fall 1998 and the National Security Council (NSC) and the 'intelligence community' were tracking the wehereabout of Osama bin Laden, the shadowy matermind of terrorist attacks on Americn targets overseas. 'They successfully triangulated his location,' yelled a 'Sit Room' watch stand. 'We've got him.' Beneath the West Wing of the White House, behind a vaulted steel door, the Sit Room staff sprang into action. The watch officer notified National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, 'Sir, we've located bin Laden. We have a two-hour window to strike'. Characteristic of the Clinton administration, the weapons of choice would be Tomahawk missiles. After several attempts to first locate President Clinton to receive permission to get Osama bin Laden, Presindent Clinton was nowhere to be found. When the President finally accepted Berger's call, there was discussion, there were pauses -- and no decision. 'We studied the issue until it was too late -- the window of opportunity closed'."

On 11 March 2004, 190 people were killed at the Madrid Train Station. One of the main terrorists was born in Bosnia yet very little was made of this important connection. However, whenever or if ever information is uncovered of a possible connection of the London terrorists to Bosnia, it will be played down as was the Bosnia connection to the Madrid bombing. It wouldn't be prudent.

[Triadtropz]

Osama was the CIA's boy in life. and now in death...he's the only dead agent in the field who's still fomenting hatred.

[Harconen]

Osama was the CIA's boy in life. and now in death...he's the only dead agent in the field who's still fomenting hatred.

Zardari doubts bin Laden is still alive

Afp, Islamabad
http://www.thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=85948


Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari said yesterday that Pakistani intelligence believes al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is dead but acknowledged they had no evidence.

"The Americans tell me they don't know, and they are much more equipped than us to trace him. And our own intelligence services obviously think that he does not exist any more, that he is dead," Zardari told reporters.

"But there is no evidence, you cannot take that as a fact," he said. "We are between facts and fiction."

Zardari was responding to reports that Pakistani Taliban in the troubled Swat valley have said they would welcome bin Laden if he wants to visit the former Pakistani hill resort which is now in the hands of Islamists.

"The question is whether he is alive or dead. There is no trace of him," the president said.

[Harconen]

Can't find Osama bin Laden? Try Bosnia and Kosovo

http://news.serbianunity.net/bydate/2004/August_03/5.html


Time: Wednesday, 08/04/04, 16:41:26


© Serbian Unity Congress. All rights reserved


Unless specifically noted, the views expressed through various news items received are not necessarily the views of the Serbian Unity Congress. The same are posted under fair use provision for education and public information


Can't find Osama bin Laden? Try Bosnia and Kosovo, Stella Jatras, August 03, 2004

Can't find Osama bin Laden? Perhaps we're not looking in the right place.

A Jihad Watch exclusive commentary by Stella L. Jatras.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/002686.php


In his book, My Life, President Clinton devotes many pages to his peccadilloes with Monica Lewinsky, a woman young enough to be his daughter, and proudly writes he did it "Because I could." However, he gives scant attention to the destruction of the sovereign nation of Yugoslavia. Let us take a look at the results of what President Bill Clinton is so "proud" of regarding U.S. intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo.

A Telegraph (UK) of 26 July report titled, "US hunts Islamic militants in Bosnia," writes: "American military intelligence and the CIA have deployed hundreds of officers in Bosnia to track suspected Islamic militants amid concerns that the country has become a refuge, recruiting ground and cash conduit for international terrorism. Almost a decade after the end of the war in the former Yugoslavia, Bosnia has become a 'one-stop shop' for Islamic militants heading from terrorist battlegrounds in Chechnya and Afghanistan to Iraq, according to European intelligence officials."

A Wall Street Journal (Europe edition) article of Nov 1, 2001 titled, "Al Qaeda's Balkan Links," reported, "The Balkan's uncharacteristically silent exit from the world stage as the most prominent international hot spot of the last decade belies its status as a major recruiting and training center of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. By feeding off the region's impoverished republics and taking root in the unsettled diplomatic aftermath of the Bosnia and Kosovo conflicts, al Qaeda, along with Iranian Revolutionary Guard-sponsored terrorists, have burrowed their way into Europe's backyard.

"For the past 10 years, the most senior leaders of al Qaeda have visited the Balkans, including bin Laden himself on three occasions between 1994 and 1996. The Egyptian surgeon turned terrorist leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri has operated terrorist training camps, weapons of mass destruction factories and money-laundering and drug-training networks throughout Albanian, Kosovo, Macedonia (FYROM), Bulgaria, Turkey and Bosnia. This has gone on for a decade. Many recruits to the Balkan wars came originally from Chechnya, a jihad in which Al Qaeda has also played a part."

At the same time the Clinton administration was supporting the Bosnian [Muslim] government of Alija Izetbegovic, that government issued a passport to Osama bin Laden at their Vienna embassy in 1992.

In a very revealing commentary titled, "We bombed the wrong side?" of April 6, 2004 (Canadian National Post), Gen. Lewis MacKenzie, first UNPROFOR commander in Bosnia, wrote, "The Kosovo-Albanians have played us like a Stradivarius. We have subsidized and indirectly supported their violent campaign for an ethnically pure and independent Kosovo. We have never blamed them for being the perpetrators of the violence in the early '90s and we continue to portray them as the designated victim today in spite of evidence to the contrary. When they achieve independence with the help of our tax dollars combined with those of bin Laden and al-Qaeda, just consider the message of encouragement this sends to others." Christopher Layne and Benjamin Schwarz wrote on the Opinion Page in The Washington Post on March 26, 2000, "Was it a Mistake? We Were Suckers for the KLA." The Kosovo Liberation Army is engaged in sex slavery, prostitution, murder, kidnapping and drugs. Furthermore, it is an army that was trained by Osama bin Laden dealing mainly in drugs, as confirmed in the May 4, 1999 article by Washington Times reporter Jerry Seper, in which he wrote, "Some members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which has financed its war effort through the sale of heroin, were trained in terrorist camps run by international fugitive Osama bin Laden -- who is wanted in the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa and killed 224 persons, including 12 Americans," yet we are told by the previous administration that at the time, Osama bin Laden was not the known threat that he is today.

In The Spectator [UK] article of Sep 6, 2003 titled, "How we trained al-Qa'eda," author Brendan O'Neill wrote, "For all the millions of words written about al-Qa'eda since the 9/11 attacks two years ago, one phenomenon is consistently overlooked - the role of the Bosnian war in transforming the mujahedin [Islamic warriors] of the 1980s into the roving Islamic terrorists of today."

Ironically, the U.S. is accusing Iran of intervening in the affairs of Iraq, yet in a House Republican Research Committee Report on Terrorism & Unconventional Warfare, titled "Iran's European Springboard?" analysts Yossef Bodansky & Vaughn S. Forrest wrote as far back as 1992, "Thus Tehran and its allies are using the violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina as a springboard for the launching of a jihad in Europe." Yossef Bodansky is the author of "Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War On America."

Through Clinton's misguided foreign policy, Bosnia has become al-Qaeda's corridor into Europe. As an example, Spanish media reported that one of the suspected terrorists involved in the Madrid bombing was born in Bosnia and linked to al Qaeda. (Financial Times, April 8, 2004/BBC monitoring). Reuters of 30 Dec 2003, writes, "UN adds Bosnia charity director to al Qaeda list." Furthermore, The Associated Press of 28 June reported, "In mosques and storefront Muslim charities, U.S. and European intelligence agencies are engaged in covert conflict in Bosnia, tracking up to 300 suspected Islamic militants and shutting down those financing them."

As for President Clinton's "successful" mission in Kosovo, National Review Online of March 19, 2004, wrote, "A pogrom started in Europe this week, with one U.S. official being quoted as saying, 'Kristallnacht is underway in Kosovo.' Serbs are being murdered and their 800-year-old churches are aflame. Much of the Christian heritage in Kosovo and Metohija is on fire and could be destroyed forever. By these deeds too many of Kosovo's Albanians have shown that their rhetoric about 'democracy' and 'multiethnicity,'is false, and demonstrates also that the international community's acceptance of them have been naive."

Americans are rightly outraged by the beheadings of our citizens. However, photos of Saudi Arabian mujahedin holding the severed heads of Serbs in Bosnia as early as 1992 or the most recent photo of KLA terrorists holding the severed of Serbs in Kosovo as late as 1999 went virtually unreported.

During a CATO discussion group the question was raised: "How could we bomb a sovereign nation in violation of the UN Charter, International law and the tenants of NATO." The answer from one of the pro-NATO bombing panelist said, "Because we could." Sound familiar?

Iyad Allawi, Prime Minister of Iraq, is quoted as saying (The New York Times, June 21) "We will do all we can to strike against the enemy forces aiming at harming our country, and we will not stand by with our hands tied." President George W. Bush said precisely the same thing when he said that we will do whatever it takes to defeat (Muslim) terrorists," yet we denied the Serbs the right to defend themselves against the same enemy that we are fighting today. As Gen. Charles Boyd, USAF (Ret), former Deputy Commander in Chief, European Command said, "The Serbs are not fighting to conquer new territory, but to hold on to what was already theirs."

I would like to suggest that if we are serious about finding Osama bin Laden, we look in Bosnia and Kosovo.