The 'formation of a Kosovar Mafia State'

The EU, the US, NATO and the UN Mission in Kosovo bear responsibility in the criminalization of Kosovo State institutions.

The following article, written in March 2000, focusses on the formation of a Kosovar Mafia State integrated by former members of the KLA. 

With the February 2008 declaration of Independence, this process has reached its completion. Kosovo is not a mafia state in its own right, it is a US/EU protectorate under NATO military rule. The government of Kosovo, which has extensive links to organized crime, serves the interests of the US-NATO occupation.

Michel Chossudovsky, 1 March 2008


June 10, 2000 International Tribunal for U.S./NATO War Crimes in Yugoslavia

THE UNITED NATIONS APPOINTS AN ALLEGED WAR CRIMINAL IN KOSOVO

By Professor Michel Chossudovsky

Professor Michel Chossudovsky (Canada), an expert historian and economist who has taken part in many international forums on the Balkans, showed the criminal role of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army and its ties to U.S. and German intelligence services, ties to NATO and the United Nations Rep. Bernard Kouchner. Michel Chossudovsky, professor of economics, University of Ottawa, author of a forthcoming book entitled "War, Globalization and the New World Order"

The United Nations in a recent [2000] report submitted to Secretary General Kofi Annan now concedes that the Kosovo Protection Force (KPC) (inaugurated under UN auspices in September 1999) has been involved in "criminal activities-killings, ill-treatment/torture, illegal policing, abuse of authority, intimidation, breaches of political neutrality and hate speech"1.

And in a cruel irony, "the United Nations is paying the salaries of many of the gangsters."² The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) --known for its connections to organized crime and the Balkans narcotics traffic was officially dissolved and transformed into the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC) modelled on the US National Guard. Funded by US military aid, the KPC is trained by Military Professional Resources Inc (MPRI), a mercenary outfit based in Alexandria, Virginia.

The KPC was slated by the United Nations to become --in the words of UNMIK Special Representative Bernard Kouchner [now France's Minister of Foreign Affairs] "a civilian, disciplined, uniformed and multi-ethnic emergency response... with a mandate to "providing humanitarian assistance... and contributing to rebuilding infrastructure and communities...."³

Shift in military labels. KLA Commander Agim Ceku was appointed Chief of Staff of Kosovo's newly created Armed Forces. In the words of Bernard Kouchner during the inauguration ceremony: I look to him [Agim Ceku] to lead the new members of the Corps in the footsteps of Cincinnatus, the model citizen-soldier of ancient Rome -- who left his plow standing in the field to answer the call to arms & and at the end of the war refused all honors in order to return to his civic duties.⁴

Barely a few weeks later, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) announced it was "investigating Ceku for alleged war crimes committed against ethnic Serbs in Croatia between 1993 and 1995." ⁵ The information, however, was known to military and intelligence analysts well in advance of Ceku's appointment. It had been withheld from public opinion by the ICTY during the mandate of Chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour. Jane Defence Weekly (10 May 1999) had confirmed that Ceku had "masterminded the successful HV [Croatian] offensive at Medak [in 1993] and in 1995 was one of the key planners of the successful Operation 'Storm ". United Nations Special Representative Dr. Bernard Kouchner (who is a 1999 Nobel Peace Laureate for his role as co-founder of Doctors without Borders) must have known...

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'At least someone knows how to fill a piggy bank'

Unlike most American consumers, whose failure to save has exasperated economists for years, the typical American corporation has increased its savings so sharply that it probably has enough cash on hand to completely pay off its debts.

~ from Unlike Consumers, Companies Are Piling Up Cash ~

(Yes!) Vermont towns vote to arrest Bush and Cheney

Voters in two Vermont towns on Tuesday approved a measure that would instruct police to arrest President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for "crimes against our Constitution," local media reported.

The nonbinding, symbolic measure, passed in Brattleboro and Marlboro in a state known for taking liberal positions on national issues, instructs town police to "extradite them to other authorities that may reasonably contend to prosecute them."

[ ... ]

State lawmakers have passed nonbinding resolutions to end the war in Iraq and impeach Bush and Cheney, and several towns have also passed resolutions of impeachment. None of them have caught on in Washington.

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NGOs Wary of Doomsday Seed Vault

Agricultural non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working in India and elsewhere are criticising the newly-opened Global Seed Vault (GSV) at Svalbard in Norway as fundamentally unjust in its objectives.

The Barcelona-based agriculture lobby, GRAIN, with branches in major developing nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America, says a serious deficiency of the seed vault is that it deals basically with state and private-body depositors to the bank, thereby excluding the rights of poor farmers who cannot access these seeds.

GRAIN says the GSV's ex-situ storage system takes unique plant varieties away from farming communities that originally created, selected, protected and shared the seeds. Farmers, it holds, do not know how to access the scientific and institutional framework involved in setting up the system and are excluded.

"This system forgets that farmers are the world's original, and ongoing, plant breeders,'' GRAIN's Asia Programme Officer, Shalini Bhutani, who is based in New Delhi, told IPS.

Negotiating intellectual property and other rights over the seeds, originally conserved by farmers, thus becomes the business of governments and the seed industry itself, she says.

Decisions on the GSV will be taken by the Norwegian government, currently regarded as trustworthy, but without guarantee that its policies will change. It has a ten-year agreement with depositors that included clauses allowing them to be terminated if policies change.

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