-Caveat Lector- Important website on Yugoslavia war, excerpts: http://www.strategicstudies.org/crisis/newrome.htm#-NATO "Ironically, the KLA�s head of �lite forces, Muhammed al-Zawahiri, is the brother of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the military commander for Saudi-born terrorist leader, Osama bin Laden." [regarding recent civilian casualites] One case in point was the bombing by NATO aircraft of four Kosovo refugee convoys in one day during the week of April 11-17, 1999. The attention focused around one of the convoys � the one which Yugoslav authorities first reached, and filmed, and to which they brought journalists later � which at first NATO denied attacking. NATO authorities at first said that it could have been attacked by Yugoslav Super Galeb fighters, flying low. Gradually, however, the NATO spokesmen had to retreat, a step at a time, from that position, although always maintaining that �some Yugoslav aircraft� could have been in the area and added to the carnage. NATO released video and audio tapes which they later admitted were, in fact, not connected with the incident at all. Then they released stories about how difficult it was to identify targets from 15,000 feet. Another minor piece of deception, as we shall see. This writer has, however, heard the voice traffic between the initial strike aircraft and his EC-130 Hercules AWACS. This is what happened: The four convoys were made of Kosovars who were returning to their homes in the Dakovica area of Western Kosovo-Metohija, not far from the Albanian border. They were moving away from the Albanian border, not attempting to �flee� from the �ethnic cleansing�. Given that the Clinton Administration has made it clear that Kosovars cannot be allowed to re-settle their lands without NATO supervision, this phase of the bombing war was not going as planned. The continuation of the NATO strategy depended upon the continuing horror and tragedy of the refugees fleeing into Albania and Macedonia. A USAF F-16 fighter was deployed to the area of the convoy in question. The following is the transcript of the mission radio traffic: Pilot: �Good day, I am in position 80. No movement underneath. Please information on red MiGs [jargon for Yugoslav combat aircraft].� AWACS: �Hello Charlie Bravo. Mother here. Patrol northwest direction Prizren-Dakovica. There are no red MiGs in the air.� Pilot: �OK, I am going to 3,000ft.� AWACS: �Mother to Charlie Bravo. You get reinforcements in about 10 minutes. There will be something interesting south of Dakovica.� Pilot: �Charlie Bravo to Mother. I am coming out of the clouds, still nothing in sight.� AWACS: �Mother to Charlie Bravo. Continue to the north, course 280.� Pilot: �Charlie Bravo to Mother. I am keeping 3,000 feet. Under me columns of cars, some kind of tractors. What is it? Requesting instructions.� AWACS: �Mother to Charlie Bravo. Do you see tanks? Repeat, where are the tanks?� Pilot: �Charlie Bravo to Mother. I see tractors. I suppose the Reds did not camouflage tanks as tractors.� AWACS: �Mother to Charlie Bravo. What kind of strange convoy is this? What, civilians? Damn, this is all the Serb�s doing. Destroy the target.� Pilot: �Charlie Bravo to Mother. What should I destroy? Tractors? Ordinary cars? Repeat, I do not see any tanks. Request additional instructions.� AWACS: �Mother to Charlie Bravo. This is a military target, a completely legitimate military target. Destroy the target. Repeat, destroy the target.� Pilot: �Charlie Bravo to Mother. OK, copy. Launching.� NATO spokesmen, including the politically ambitious NATO Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Wesley Clark, said: �We may never know what really happened.� Clearly, that is not true. ------------------------------------another clip from above website-- Who and What is the KLA? The Ushtria Clirimtare e Kosove (UCK) or Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) has several �parents� � including the Iranian and Bosnia-Herzegovina governments � and several important �midwives-cum-doting aunts�, including the United States, Croatian and Turkish governments and a wide range of individuals. The KLA would not be the significant factor it is today in the Kosovo crisis, however, had it not been for the blessing of the United States Clinton Administration, and for the direct and indirect support given to it by the Clinton Administration. It now seems clear that the US Clinton Administration and the German Government have been actively supporting the KLA since 1992 with weapons, training, intelligence and, most importantly, significant political encouragement. The final turning point in KLA fortunes came when US special envoys Richard Holbrooke and Peter Galbraith posed in 1998 for pictures with the KLA leadership, thereby cementing the endorsement. Ironically, the KLA has its origins in the stalinist/leninist/maoist Albanian Party of Labor of the late Albanian leader Enver Hoxha. Today, although clearly of a maoist bent � its leader, Adem Demaci, uses the maoist clenched fist salute constantly � it also uses the appeals of nationalism and religion to win converts among the Kosovar Albanians. Gradually, following the end of the stalinist era in Albania in 1992, the KLA, by now mainly operating out of Germany and among the expatriate Albanian Kosovars, as well as inside Albania, began drifting more toward becoming a purely criminal organization, almost totally preoccupied with narcotics trafficking and extortion to sustain itself. Not much has changed since then, apart from the addition to the KLA�s persona of political-military support from the Iranian Government and then from the US and German governments. In a landmark report � Italy Becomes Iran�s New Base for Terrorist Operations � written for Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy in late 1997, and published in the April-May 1998 edition, Senior Editor Yossef Bodansky noted: �[B]y late 1997, the Tehran-sponsored training and preparations for the Liberation Army of Kosovo (UCK � Ushtria Clirimtare e Kosoves � in Albanian; OVK in Serbian), as well as the transfer of weapons and experts via Albania, were being increased. Significantly, Tehran�s primary objective in Kosovo has evolved from merely assisting a Muslim minority in distress to furthering the consideration of the Islamic strategic access along the Sarejevo-to- Tiran� line. And not only by expanding and escalating subversive and Islamist-political presence can this objective be attained.� �In the Fall of 1997, the uppermost leadership in Tehran ordered the IRGC [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps; the Pasdaran] High Command to launch a major program for shipping large quantities of weapons and other military supplies to the Albanian clandestine organizations in Kosovo.� �... [B]y early December 1997, Iranian intelligence had already delivered the first shipments of hand grenades, machine- guns, assault rifles, night vision equipment, and communications gear from stockpiles in Albania to Kosovo. ... the Iranians began sending promising Albanian and UCK commanders for advanced training in [Iranian-controlled] al-Quds forces and IRGC camps in Iran. Meanwhile, weapons shipments continue. Thus Tehran is well on its way to establishing a bridgehead in Kosovo.� The report detailed the KLA�s requirements for men and equipment, and outlined the KLA�s proposed theaters of operations. [The full text of the report is available on the Defense & Foreign Affairs website at www.StrategicStudies.org.] The report further went on to say that the KLA�s radical wing was considering the assassination of the leader of the moderate Democratic League of Kosovo (DLK), Dr Ibrahim Rugova, and Fehmi Agani, the DLK deputy chairman, and blaming Belgrade for the killings. Dr Rugova, however, escaped assassination and remained in Yugoslavia to help negotiate a peaceful solution to the Kosovo crisis. Even after the NATO bombings began on March 24, 1999, he remained in Yugoslavia to help negotiate an end to the crisis, a move which has led KLA sources to �leak� to the media the fact that Dr Rugova was, in fact, �a virtual prisoner� of the Yugoslav Government, something which Dr Rugova�s visibility in the Yugoslav media should have dispelled. Dr Rugova�s position, however, is not one which the US Clinton Administration wishes to hear. The US committed itself to the KLA, and therefore to trying to break off Kosovo � with its 20 ethnic groups, not just the Kosovar Albanians � into a separate state. So the thought that Dr Rugova was �a virtual prisoner� remained in the media interpretation, blessed by the Clinton White House. Either because of political commitment, or to simplify the public�s perceptions, the Clinton Administration has promoted the view that the KLA represents those Kosovo residents of Albanian origin. Clearly, the KLA does not. The KLA has for some years based its revenue collection on extorting money from expatriate Kosovars under the threat of assassination of their relatives at home, and on drug trafficking and violence aimed largely at the Kosovo people themselves. The KLA is the principal proponent of the �greater Albania� philosophy, under which the organization first hopes to achieve an independent Kosovo under its control and then to use that base to take over Albania itself, given that Albania is currently in a virtual state of anarchy. Before that stage is reached, however, the swelling Albanian minority in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYRM) would be targeted for either complete takeover or for the �Albanian part� to be targeted for �independence�. These are objectives which the KLA does not bother to hide. However, the German and US administrations have chosen to ignore these objectives, and the ongoing criminal activities of the organization. As noted, the KLA, supported since 1992 by the US and Iran � who are, in fact, strategic opponents, given the Iranian clerical administration�s structural incompatibility with the West � received much support and training from the radical Muslim leadership of Bosnia-Herze- govina, under President Alija Izetbegovi�. It may be a matter of some significance that during 1992, before William Clinton became US President, he signed, as Governor of the US State of Arkansas, an �initiative� with the �Socialist Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina�. In response, the Bosnians �pronounce[d] the month of April 1992 as �The Month of Bosnia-Berzegovina and Arkansas��. The Official Gazette of the Bosnians, in February 1992, published the following item, dated February 15, 1992: �On acceptance of the initiative of the governor of the state of Arkansas, on establishment of close cooperation with the Socialist Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina: The initiative of the governor of the state of Arkansas on establishment of close cooperation between the Socialist Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina in the field of culture, education, economy, science and other forms of cooperation is hereby accepted.� The implications for the KLA are apparent in this closeness. Ironically, the KLA�s head of �lite forces, Muhammed al-Zawahiri, is the brother of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the military commander for Saudi-born terrorist leader, Osama bin Laden. The US Clinton Administration has, of course, declared bin Laden �public enemy number one� for his alleged involvement in the bombing of the two US embassies in East Africa in 1998. And Ayman al-Zawahiri has been implicated in the assassination attempt in 1995 against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Little wonder that numerous US policy analysts, even those who are hostile to Yugoslavia as a basic stance, are extremely uncomfortable with the Clinton Administration�s close ties with the KLA. There is no doubt that the involvement of the two brothers al-Zawahiri in the two movements is not coincidental. Ben Works, director of the Strategic Research Institute of the US, noted: �There�s no doubt that bin Laden�s people have been in Kosovo helping to arm, equip and train the KLA. ... [T]he [US] Administration�s policy in Kosovo is to help bin Laden. It almost seems as if the Clinton Administration�s policy is to guarantee more terrorism.� Noted strategic analyst and columnist, former US Army Colonel Harry Summers, said on August 12, 1998, that in Kosovo, the US found itself �championing the very Islamic fundamentalist terrorist groups who are our mortal enemies elsewhere�. The KLA�s criminal activities are well-known in Europe, but in nearby Italy, they are of greatest concern, because increased war will make its first impact on the European Union�s prosperity by affecting Italy. In the first two weeks of January 1999, alone, there were nine murders carried out in Milan by KLA assets. The line between the KLA and the other purely criminal Albanian mafia elements is now indistinguishable. And yet this is the group favored by the Clinton Administration (and as a result by the Blair Administration in the UK) over the moderate Kosovo Albanian leaders who have always sought to create a situation in which Yugoslavs of Albanian origin could live, pray and work in harmony alongside the other 25 Yugoslav nationalities. Indeed, Clinton and Blair deliberately overturned a workable agreement signed by all Yugoslav parties in Kosovo so that the KLA-written �Rambouillet Accords� could be served up as an ultimatum to the Yugoslav Government. Agim Gashi, 35, an ethnic Albanian from the Kosovo capital, Pristina, was, until his recent arrest, the major drug dealer in Milan. In a March 15, 1999, article (ie: before the bombing began) by writer William Norman Grigg, an Italian police telephone intercept was cited in which Gashi urged his Turkish heroin suppliers to continue shipments during the holy Muslim period of Ramadan. Gashi said that the continuation of the shipments was for the sake of an important cause: �To submerge Christian infidels in drugs.� But at least part of the billions which Gashi made from the narcotics trade went to buy a variety of weapons for the KLA. Most of the weapons were from pirated Russian stocks, ironically. Today, Russia is trying to reinforce Yugoslavia in the fight against the KLA and NATO. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections 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, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. 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