ISSUE 1416
Sunday 11
April 1999
KLA recruits leave London
By Rajeev Syal
Invincible sails in as UK doubles war
effort
MORE than 500 Albanians have left Britain
after volunteering to become guerrilla
fighters in
the war against Serbia, according to Kosovo
Liberation Army representatives in London.
Men and women from Britain's 8,000-strong
Albanian community have gone to Tirana, the
Albanian capital, to be trained as soldiers.
They
are responding to a general order issued by
the
KLA last month asking all Albanian people
from 18 to 50 to report to join the war to
free
Kosovo.
Pleurat Sejdiu, the KLA's official
representative
in London, said yesterday that they had been
inundated with new recruits. "We have
received
many requests to join the KLA from people who
have heard that their friends and relatives
have
been killed or hurt in the conflict," he
said.
More than 340 volunteers have signed up to
the
KLA in the past three weeks. Once they have
pledged themselves to the army, they are
interviewed by a number of KLA
representatives
at a secret north London address.
One volunteer, Ekrem, 34, last week pledged
to
fight for Kosovo - even though he has never
been
there - and has lived a settled, trouble-free
life in
Britain for four years after leaving Albania.
He said that he was ready to leave his job as
a
mini-cab driver, his British girlfriend of
two
years and his home in Cricklewood, north
London, for the war because his cousin,
Burim,
died fighting for the KLA.
"I do not want to die - but if I do not go
and
defend my brothers, and fight for my family
members who have died in battle, I cannot
expect a single Nato soldier to die for
Kosovo,"
Ekrem said. He will be sent to Tirana via
Italy
because the airport in the Albanian capital
has
been closed. Once in Italy, he will cross the
Adriatic Sea by ferry and take a coach to
Tirana.
The volunteers are allocated to military
training
in camps around the Albanian capital.
Ex-servicemen from the Albanian or
Yugoslavian armies receive just 15 days of
training. If they are without military
experience
they are sent away for a month's training.
New soldiers are then assigned to the
infantry,
artillery or anti-tank units. Some are sent
straight to the front to fight. The KLA
claims
that it has turned away hundreds of other
volunteers because it is sticking to its
strict
policy of only allowing Albanians to join the
army.
More than 300 non-Albanians, many of whom
are British-based Muslims or former British
servicemen, have asked if they can fight in
Kosovo. They have been turned away because
the KLA does not want to be accused by Serb
propogandists of running an Islamic movement
or an army of foreigners.
More than 30,000 members of the KLA have
died since it was formed in 1996. Yesterday,
clashes resumed along the Kosovo-Albanian
border between the KLA and Serb military
forces, according to the Organisation for
Security and Co-operation in Europe.
10 April 1999: [International] Young men
flock to
join KLA fighters
2 April 1999: [International] KLA faces
collapse
as men and guns run out
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