Here's some interesting background on the KLA organization, it's history and leaders - particularly "General" Ceku - including sources where noted.

tommygunns

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Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the May 27, 1999 issue of Workers World newspaper

NO 'LIBERATION ARMY'

Croatian general commands KLA

By Gary Wilson

It has been revealed that the top commander of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army is Agim Ceku, a brigadier general who took a leave from the Croatian Army in February.

The source for this is Jane's Defense Weekly of May 10. Jane's is a British publication known around the world as authoritative on military matters.

This news may help dispel some of the many myths surrounding the KLA. However, it is not surprising to those who have known for a long time that the KLA is a mercenary contra army promoted by foreign imperialist powers, not a home-grown operation.

Ceku's new position is also ominous news for opponents of NATO's brutal war. In August 1995 Ceku presided over "Operation Storm," the massive bombing and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Serb farmers from the part of Croatia known as the Krajina.

The revelation that he is now heading the KLA is widely seen as a sign that a ground-force invasion is being prepared.

Ceku's military career began in the Yugoslav Army. But after Croatia became a separate state under the reactionary leadership of Franjo Tudjman, he defected to the Croatian Army. Ceku, an ethnic Albanian, was then trained by the United States.

He is closely tied to Military Professional Resources, Inc. MPRI is a semi-official Pentagon contractor headed by retired U.S. military officers. It specializes in sending mercenary armies under Pentagon contract into wars without even the figleaf of congressional oversight.

Jane's Defense Weekly describes Ceku as "one of the key planners of the successful `Operation Storm.'" Many reports have shown in detail that MPRI planned and directed this operation in the Krajina.

"Operation Storm" was, until the current U.S. bombing, the bloodiest and most brutal military campaign in the Balkans since the Nazi invasion during World War II.

The Pentagon contracted MPRI to organize and train the Croatian Army--which carried out the August 1995 offensive against Serbian farmers in the Krajina region. Hundreds of thousands were left homeless. This vast refugee population was never allowed to return home.

A report in the July 28, 1997, issue of the Nation magazine detailed the role MPRI and the Pentagon played in this criminal campaign. Back in 1995 when it happened, however, the media here suppressed the U.S. role in this major assault.

Finally, this March 21, the New York Times carried a front-page story about a report from the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague that characterized this attack as probably the most brutal event in the Balkans in the last decade. But no commentators picked up on this. The report was quickly forgotten.

The Croatian government has now confirmed that it gave "special leave" to several of its generals to go lead the KLA.

While NATO denies it, there is glaring evidence of close military coordination between its operations and those of the KLA. In a briefing aired May 11 on MSNBC, a NATO general showed a map said to be the area of KLA military operations in Kosovo. Then he showed a map of where NATO's bombings have been concentrated in Kosovo. The two maps matched almost exactly.

He then said, without cracking a smile, that while this might seem to indicate that the efforts were coordinated, it was purely a coincidence.

Where did KLA come from?

Many myths persist about the KLA. These myths include claims that its founders were Marxists. Although few could believe that a genuine Marxist-based liberation army would allow itself to be an agent of the imperialists, reports in the media continue to allude to this claim.

The origins of the KLA are murky at best. Some say it was founded in 1993. Others put the organization's beginnings in 1996, when a letter was sent to the media announcing its formation. The letter took credit for a February 1996 massacre of Serbian refugees from the Krajina region of Croatia who had fled to Kosovo for safety.

Throughout 1996 and 1997, most of the KLA attacks were on Albanians who it called "collaborators." These were Albanian opponents of the separatist movement in Kosovo.

From 1995 to 1997 there had been a great influx of Kosovo Albanians into the Serbian Socialist Party (SPS). Qamil Gashi, the Albanian chairperson of the SPS municipal council in Kosovo, said this was because solutions to the problems in Kosovo were clearly being worked out.

On Feb. 6, 1996, Gashi said: "We should not be labeled `traitors' to our own people because we have joined the SPS. It was us, the Socialists and the SPS leadership, who initiated actions to solve numerous economic and municipal problems more swiftly." (From "Between Serb and Albanian, a History of Kosovo," by Miranda Vickers)

The KLA killed Gashi in November 1997.

It was the KLA that was targeting Albanian socialists and calling them traitors.

According to reports in the Yugoslav media, the Yugoslav government believed that KLA operations were being carried out by mercenaries trained in Bosnia. Government reports said that the Albanian government of Sali Berisha was coordinating the actions through the Albanian Embassy in Pristina.

Berisha was widely seen as a puppet of the U.S. government. U.S. support had put him into power. He then allowed the U.S. military to put a base in Albania and turned over control of the Albanian secret police to the U.S. CIA (French Press Agency, Oct. 26, 1997).

The KLA does not attempt to hide that its headquarters is on Sali Berisha's estate in Albania.

The KLA was never an organization like the liberation armies that are well known around the world. It never had a recognized leadership. It never even had a spokesperson until last year.

It never issued any documents or statements of purpose. It doesn't even have a newspaper or magazine.

The grouping that called itself the KLA at first was actually an odd assortment of various opponents of the Yugoslav government who joined together with gangsters, mercenaries and other opportunists. Those who called themselves KLA ranged from people claiming to be followers of Albania's former Marxist leader, Enver Hoxha, to those who claimed roots in the fascist, nationalist Greater Albanian organizations of the 1940s. It was a combination of convenience, with no central agreement on anything but their hatred of the Yugoslav government.

In an article on the history of the KLA in the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, Chris Hedges describes it in a similar way, saying that the KLA is divided into factions.

Hedges says the KLA inside Kosovo is "led by the sons and grandsons of rightist Albanian fighters." These were from the "Skanderbeg volunteer SS division raised by the Nazis, or the descendants of the rightist Albanian kacak rebels who rose up against the Serbs 80 years ago. Although never much of a fighting force, the Skanderbeg division took part in the shameful roundup and deportation of the province's few hundred Jews during the Holocaust. The division's remnants fought Tito's Partisans at the end of the war, leaving thousands of ethnic Albanians dead. The decision by KLA commanders to dress their police in black fatigues and order their fighters to salute with a clenched fist to the forehead has led many to worry about these fascist antecedents."

Even by Hedges description, the KLA leaders in exile don't say they are Marxist. He quotes one of them, Jakup Krasniqi, as saying, "I do not think we have an ideology." That is why there is no political organization or political platform. "We do not have time for such things," Krasniqi said.

The KLA has nothing in common with Marxist-based liberation movements, which are known for their alliances based on political principles and their working-class orientation.

The early unholy alliance that called itself the KLA mostly targeted Albanian socialists. It also killed isolated Serbian farming families. Its operations were minor compared to those of the KLA that would later emerge.

Shift in 1997-98

In late 1997 and early 1998, there was a sudden shift. The KLA went through a "rapid and startling growth," according to a report in the April 25, 1998, New York Times.

Foreign mercenaries, money and arms started to pour in to the KLA. The erstwhile KLA bands were quickly overwhelmed by an influx of mercenaries coming from Germany and the United States, who quickly took over command. It took a year before a representative from Kosovo could be produced to represent the KLA publicly.

The new KLA began serious military operations--not only killing isolated Albanian and Serbian individuals but attacking government buildings and police stations. This open warfare could only be stopped by strong police measures. But when the government forces responded, the U.S. and NATO powers accused them of repression.

This became the excuse for their war on Yugoslavia.

Some reports indicate that there were objections to the "new" KLA from some of those who had called themselves the KLA early on. But they were quickly silenced. By the time of the Rambouillet talks in France, the U.S. government was openly declaring who were legitimate KLA representatives and who were not.

Today, according to various news reports including reports in Jane's Defense Weekly, KLA forces inside Kosovo include U.S. military Special Forces as well as British SAS forces. This is no liberation army. It is an arm of NATO's imperialist invasion of Yugoslavia.

- END -

(Copyleft Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contactWorkers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@workers.org. For subscription info send message to: info@workers.org. Web: http://www.workers.org )

TOMMYGUNS
Thanks for the butt representation i sent it to a DMS friend who just heard from his Dr he's sick. I hope it will cheer him up

Emina

Zoja,

You posted the following article on the "What should be done after the war" message board.

In light of recent events in Kosovo, isn't it interesting that British diplomats (Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, to be exact) and NATO leaders knew beforehand what would happen in Kosovo when the YU Army pulled out and the KLA was not immediately subdued???????

(Note: [...] indicates deleted portions of the article. These deletions DO NOT alter the article, other than to reduce the length. The complete article can be read on the aforementioned message board)

tommygunns

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By Zoja on Thursday, May 27, 1999 - 10:35 am:

NATO fears Kosovo post-war vacuum - UK diplomats
07:33 p.m May 26, 1999 Eastern

By Clar Ni Chonghaile

LONDON, May 27 (Reuters) - NATO is looking ahead to post-war life in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo and firmly believes the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) cannot be left in control, British diplomats say.

Fears that Kosovo will be plunged into anarchy after an eventual peace deal have been cited by NATO officials as one reason for beefing up the peace implementation force.

``If there was an interval of any substance between the withdrawal of Serb forces and NATO going in, Pristina would be held by the KLA, a senior British diplomat said on Wednesday.

``They are a guerrilla force and should not be regarded in a romantic way,'' said the diplomat, who declined to be identified.

[...]

[...]

Critics accuse the KLA of being little more than a gun-toting mafia.

NATO is reluctant to give the guerrillas any time to secure a power base after a Serb withdrawal from Kosovo.

``We must not allow the creation of a vacuum. We have to see to it that troops are able to be deployed quickly on the ground,'' German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer told reporters after a meeting with Cook.

``There will probably be a breakdown in law and order when the Serb troops withdraw. We want Kosovo returned to a democratic self-governing province which is not just run by the men with guns,'' the British diplomat said.

[...]

FYI -

tommygunns

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From the BBC News website
Thursday, August 26, 1999

Ex-Nato chief criticises Kosovo campaign
Nato strikes made things worse, says the former foreign secretary

Nato strikes on Serbia caused, rather than prevented, ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, says Nato's former Secretary-General and former UK Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington.

In an interview in the September issue of the lifestyle magazine Saga, Peter Carrington also questions the branding of the Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic as a war criminal.

"I think what Nato did by bombing Serbia actually precipitated the exodus of the Kosovo Albanians into Macedonia and Montenegro," he told the magazine, published by the over-50s holiday club Saga.

Lord Carrington, who was foreign secretary from 1979 to 1982 and Nato secretary-general from 1984 to 1988, was critical of the alliance during Nato's bombing campaign.

In an article in The Daily Telegraph in March, he argued that air strikes would serve mainly to harden Serbian resolve and undermine the integrity of Nato. He said that often, the wisest course is to do nothing.

But in the Saga interview, published on Friday, Lord Carrington openly accuses Nato governments of creating the mass exodus of Kosovo Albanians.

"I think the bombing did cause the ethnic cleansing. What we did made things very much worse. I think it is a great mistake to intervene in a civil war," he said.

He also says he is not standing up for the Serbs, who "behaved badly and extremely stupidly" by removing Kosovo's autonomy.

"The whole business in the Balkans had been mismanaged from the start," he said. "It was obvious it was going to blow up."

The 80-year-old former politician was foreign secretary during the Falklands War and resigned over his department's failure to foresee the Argentine invasion of the islands.

Lord Carrington also criticised Britain for being "a little bit selective" about its condemnation of ethnic cleansing, in Africa as well as in Europe.

"I don't thing he is any more a war criminal than President Tudjman of Croatia, who ethnically cleansed 200,000 Serbs out of Krajina. Nobody kicked up a fuss about that," he said.

Forgive me, I wish to share some thoughts & express a few words this morning (my time!) as I've just spent most of my evening reading script posted on this site, primarily by - Phil, T/gunn's & Zoja!

I do not disagree with some of what you (I presume?) unconditionally & conciously wrote, quite the opposite, on all three counts, however!

What really amuses me, neither of you share or express your expertise regarding your chosen subjects?, within context of your banter & copious amounts of text!, and to agree to a realistic solution.

After all points considered?, other than to express points of view with a 'soul' purpose of 'outdoing one another' with your obvious intalectual points of view?

I suggest, thank God Acadamia does't outway realism & commonsense!

Forgive me, I wish to share some thoughts & express a few words this morning (my time!) as I've just spent most of my evening reading script posted on this site, primarily by - Phil, T/gunn's & Zoja!

I do not disagree with some of what you (I presume?) unconditionally wrote, quite the opposite, on all three counts, however!

What really amuses me, neither of you share or express your expertise regarding your chosen subjects (within context of your banter & copious amounts of text!) to agree to a realistic solution, after all points considered?, other than to express points of view with a 'soul' purpose of 'outdoing one another' with your obvious interlectual points of view?

Thank God Acadamia does't outway realism & commonsense!

TO JOHN

What really amuses me, neither of you share or express your expertise regarding your chosen subjects (within context of your banter & copious amounts of text!) to agree to a realistic solution, after all points considered?, other than to express points of view with a 'soul' purpose of 'outdoing one another' with your obvious interlectual points of view?

*** John if you do get personal meaning my sister Zoja and I it gets brushed off by words like your from there and i don't want to get involved(maybe not the exact words, but they were used by Tommygunns. Meaning as a person from Bosnia in my case its hardly any use to give a n opinion cause it feels not respected therefor i better not waste anytime formulating words on the whole matter.

Emina

Arms Around the World

It was the early 1990s and then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton
was on the campaign trail making promises: "I expect to review our
arms sales policy and to take it up with the other major arms sellers
of the world as a part of a long-term effort to reduce the proliferation
of weapons."

Ah, campaign promises. But the economy was in the doldrums, and
the prospect of cutting arms sales -- sugar daddy to one of the
nation's largest industries -- didn't thrill either labor or corporate
America. What's more, the Gulf War had just ended the previous
year, and it was the best extended commercial an arms salesman
could ask for. (Indeed, some arms manufacturers incorporated
bombing videos into their promotional materials.) Countries were
clamoring for the high-tech weapons that made for such good TV.

So, once elected, Bill Clinton did what he does best: He took
advantage of the opportunity. Rather than insert human-rights
concerns into the arms-sales equation, as did his Democratic
predecessor President Carter, Clinton decided to aggressively
continue the sales policies of President Bush, himself no slouch
when it came to selling U.S. arms.



Early on, Clinton required our diplomats to shill for arms merchants
to their host countries. The results were immediate: During Clinton's
first year in office, U.S. arms sales more than doubled. From 1993 to
1997, the U.S. government sold, approved, or gave away $190 billion
in weapons to virtually every nation on earth.

The arms industry, meanwhile, has greased the wheels. It filled the
Democratic Party coffers to the tune of nearly $2 million in the 1998
election cycle.

To examine the Clinton administration's eagerness to arm the world,
the MoJo Wire has compiled a detailed look at America's top
weapons customers during the Clinton years, tallying their total
1993-97 purchases through both the Pentagon (so-called "Foreign
Military Sales," or FMS) and U.S. manufacturers ("Direct
Commercial Sales," or DCS).

What we found is that while the U.S. obviously sells weapons to
NATO countries and relatively democratic allies like Japan and
South Korea, it also has a nasty habit of arming both sides in a
conflict, as well as countries with blighted democracy or
human-rights records, like Indonesia, Colombia, and Saudi Arabia.

All of this might be justified as a way to maintain a strong
manufacturing job-base in the U.S., but some of these sales actually
result in jobs being shipped abroad -- while arms manufacturers get
tax breaks for merging, resulting in further layoffs here at home.

We examined the top dozen of these arms-exporting corporations,
showing which does business where and how each has taken
advantage of myriad federal tax breaks, reimbursements, and golden
parachutes -- as well as the eagerness of Congress to keep one of
the economy's largest employing segments happy.

In a separate story, we detail the arms industry's lobbying strategies
in Washington: how it keeps the export pipeline wide open, and
easily outmaneuvers Congress' occasional attempt to tie arms sales
to human-rights records.

Lastly, we list organizations that you can join or support to help
influence U.S. and corporate policies toward arms sales around the
world.





Below is a sample of some of our most interesting findings:

Shipping Jobs Overseas
According to the Pentagon, the defense industry laid off 795,000
American workers between 1992 and 1997. At the same time, many
of these corporations were sweetening their arms deals to other
countries by offering "offsets" -- incentives provided to foreign
countries in exchange for the purchase of military goods and
services. The programs often include agreements to manufacture
some or all of the products in the purchasing country.

Turkey, for example, agreed to buy 160 F-16s from General
Dynamics in 1987 (for delivery through 1994) for an estimated $4
billion -- on the condition that most of the planes be built in Turkey.
The offset resulted in 1,500 jobs going to Turkey. In 1992, General
Dynamics entered into a similar F-16 offset deal with South Korea
and brought 400 Koreans to its Fort Worth, Texas, plant for training,
after having laid off 10,000 workers in the previous two years.

Lockheed Martin has continued the trend since it bought General
Dynamics' F-16 program in 1993: In vying for a contract to supply
fighters to Poland, it is offering to build an assembly plant there for
all future F-16 sales to Central Europe -- so the planes won't be
made in the U.S. at all. Makes you feel patriotic, doesn't it?

Corporate Pork
Under a Defense Department policy initiated in 1993, U.S. taxpayers
wind up covering a big chunk of the cost of defense-corporation
mergers. The tally so far has reached $856.2 million in perfectly
legal write-offs, including $405 million for the Lockheed/Martin
Marietta merger, to name one example. Because of the policy,
Lockheed was able to bill the Pentagon up front for $2.4 million of
CEO Norman Augustine's salary.

In 1996, Congress created the Defense Export Loan Guarantee
program to finance U.S. weapons sales to foreign countries. Its first
beneficiary? A United Industrial sale of pilotless aircraft and training
systems to cash-strapped Romania. If Romania defaults on its
payments (not a bad bet for a country in economic turmoil), U.S.
taxpayers will be left holding the bag: $16.7 million. But United
Industrial gets paid either way.

Arming Both Sides
The Clinton administration has not been shy about arming potential
foes in regional conflicts. For example, two of America's biggest
arms customers are Greece and Turkey, which have been
threatening to go to war with each other for decades over the tiny
Mediterranean island of Cyprus.

Both countries stake a claim to the island, more than a third of
which has been occupied by Turkish forces since 1974, and the two
have clashed hundreds of times in the 25 years since.

Though barred by Congress from selling offensive weapons to
Cyprus itself, in 1997 the U.S. sold (or allowed American
corporations to sell) more than $270 million worth of weapons to
Greece and nearly $750 million worth to Turkey. Now if there's a war,
the two NATO allies can blast away at one another with far greater
efficiency, thanks to the U.S. defense industry and its cheerleader,
Bill Clinton.

DANIELA

No doubt Clinton has made a mess and will leave a mess for the next presedent to clean up.IF he/she is willing too, but i would like to know your source from this article?

Emina
PS this has nothing to do with trust, but more with curiousity

Sorry, I should have done it already:

http://www.motherjones.com/arms/

Daniela,

Good post. Mother Jones has always done very good investigative reporting. Unfortunately, the people who need to read this kind of reporting rarely do - some are scared off by the taint of "leftism", but most are too lazy to inform themselves.

tommygunns

John-Australia wrote:

>> What really amuses me, neither of you share or express your expertise regarding your chosen subjects (within context of your banter & copious amounts of text!) to agree to a realistic solution, after all points considered?, other than to express points of view with a 'soul' purpose of 'outdoing one another' with your obvious interlectual points of view? >>

John, I'm not sure what you mean by "expertise" in the context of this forum. Speaking for myself, I have pointed out in earlier posts my undergraduate studies in international relations and history and a life long interest in politics, social change, and revolutionary movements. I don't think any of us on this forum are "experts", just ordinary people with different opinions.

As for "agree to a realistic solution". I believe the purpose of the forum is to share ideas and opinions in an open dialogue, not to come to some agreement, or even a solution. I don't know about others, but I'm not looking for affirmation or a "good-boy" pat on the head.

Emina wrote:

>> John if you do get personal meaning my sister Zoja and I it gets brushed off by words like your from there and i don't want to get involved(maybe not the exact words, but they were used by Tommygunns. Meaning as a person from Bosnia in my case its hardly any use to give an opinion cause it feels not respected therefor i better not waste anytime formulating words on the whole matter.<<

Emina, let me try one more time. I have NOT brushed you off or your sister, Zoja. I respect your opinions, even if I don't always agree with them. I know you are from Bosnia and that you experienced a personal and emotional tragedy and have lost friends and family. I empathize with your loss. I can't do much more than say how sorry I am for that loss.

I have read all of the archived posts in this forum and have noticed that EVERY article you have posted has something negative regarding Milosevic and Serbia. Anytime someone objects to the content of these posts, or points out that there are other "demons" involved in the breakup of Yugoslavia or that there might be other reasons for what happened, you become very defensive and your responses become a litany of personal tragedies and accusations that others can't understand because they aren't from there.

Honestly, Emina. What else can anyone say, except that I'm awfully sorry for the horrible tragedies you and Zoja experienced, especially because of MY government's heavy responsibility for those tragic events.

Where we disagree is pointing blame. Milosevic is a jerk and maybe even evil, but he's NOT Hitler. Some Serbs are bad people, but mostly they are good people, the same as any other people. Genocide is an extreme word used much too loosely in the context of Serbia and it's leaders. For the record, the term "ethnic cleansing" was first used by the US State Dept. to describe the Croatian expulsion of Serbs in the early ninties, later applied to Serbia and Milosevic for propaganda purposes. Where has Serbia "ethnically cleansed"? If anyone has been ethnically cleansed, it's the Serbs - from Slovenia, from Croatia, from parts of Bosnia, and most recently from Kosovo.

In brief, I object STRONGLY to the continuous demonization of Serbia.

And finally, I must note that you, Zoja, and Phil have NOT offered any substantial rebuttals or alternative theories to the many analytical points I've made or questions I've brought up. Which only leads me to believe that this forum is not interested in an exchange of ideas, but rather a kind of "feel good" therapy session. This is also evident throughout the archived messages.

Peace,

tommygunns

well, they are not even from Bosnia...
you really had a chance to read all their posts?
anyway, I have enjoyed reading your observation(s)!

TO TOMMYGUNNS
You can't say more and i don't exspect you too.
I have lots of Serbian people amongst my friends so to say that i think Serbs are EVIL people....No i guess you misunderstood Milosevic yes he and his wife i call evil, but not the ordanairy folks.If you read carefully you also noticed i still can't hate. Another thing not to brush you off, but is this disaster board maybe not meant to share loss or tell how one feels who ever it is....???

I mean Daniela for instance still thinks that were not Bosnian well its her right to doubt that. I also know why she doubt, cause i refuse to speak Servo-Croation on an English site.So everybody is entitled to his her opinion and emotions, cause thats what its all about.

Yes your right my previas posts were emotion.There was another war going on which is sad more then sad.Lately im not here very much due to other obligations and no war to remind me, so maybe a little less emotional, but without emotions on this toppic i will never be.

Emina