[kosovo]

What are the origins of the US role in the Balkans? Why was Albania of strategic importance for NATO? Why did US policy support Albania and Albanian separatists in the former Yugoslavia? Why did the US support Greater Albania in Kosovo and Western Macedonia?

The CIA and Greater Albania: The Origins of the US Role in the Balkans

By Carl K. Savich

Introduction: The Missing Link

Why did the US support the separatist and terrorist so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA, or UCK in Shqip), which sought to create an ethnically pure Albanian Kosovo based on ethnicity? Why did the US sponsor a criminal and illegal separatist movement that sought to ethnically cleanse non-Albanians and create an independent state of Kosova? Why was the US supporting and sponsoring the re-establishment of a fascist-Nazi Greater Albania that Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini had initially created?

When did the US begin to play a role in Kosovo? Did the US role in Kosovo begin with the arming and training of the KLA terrorist group which began a separatist war for the creation of a Greater Albania in 1998? Did the US role in Kosovo begin in 1989 when the Yugoslavian government curtailed Albanian control and domination of the province because Kosovo Serbs and other non-Albanians were being murdered and driven out of the province? Did US involvement in Kosovo begin with the death of Yugoslav Communist leader Josip Broz Tito in 1980? Did it begin in 1981 following Albanian riots in Kosovo that sought to create an ethnically pure Albanian Kosova “Republic”?

Did US support for the terrorist KLA emerge sui generis in 1998 as a response to the alleged genocide and ethnic cleansing perpetrated against Albanians by the Slobodan Milosevic regime? What is the missing link or connection between the Greater Albania created by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and US support for the KLA/UCK?

The recruitment of the former Nazi-fascist members of the Balli Kombetar by the CIA and MI6 in 1948 in order to engineer a regime change in Albania provides the origins and roots for US involvement in Kosovo and the creation of a Greater Albania or Ethnic Albania. The Balli Kombetar had been an ultra-nationalist, right-wing Greater Albania movement that had been created specifically to retain Kosovo as part of a Greater Albania. The issue of Kosovo and a Greater Albania was central to the Balli Kombetar movement. Operation Valuable/Fiend established the US government and CIA connections to the former Nazi/fascist leaders of Greater Albania, the Balli Kombetar, who are the forebears and precursors of the KLA Movement. Operation Valuable/Fiend by the CIA and MI6 provides the missing link between the Greater Albania of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and the Greater Albania created by the US, NATO and EU in the 1990s.

Regime Change in Albania

The first major paramilitary operation by the CIA in the Cold War took place in Albania. The secret CIA operation was conducted in conjunction with British MI6 and was known by the codename Operation Valuable, or as BG/FIEND by the CIA. The operation was conceived by British intelligence to depose the Communist regime of Enver Hoxha. It was one of the first attempts at “regime change” during the Cold War in the “denied areas” or “captive nations”.

There were several reasons why the UK sought to achieve a regime change in Tirana. It was meant as a “rollback” action, to deprive the Soviet Union of a client state. Strategically, Britain sought to deny the USSR naval bases on the Adriatic coast, which threatened British and US control of the Mediterranean. Britain was a naval power and securing sea lanes was of paramount concern. The operation was to consist of inserting UK and US trained commandos into Albania to organize guerrilla groups who would mount a coup that would overthrow Enver Hoxha. For the CIA, it would be “a clinical experiment to see whether large roll-back operations would be feasible elsewhere.”

Direct British and American involvement in Albania and the Balkans began with their support of anti-German and anti-Italian resistance and guerrilla groups during World War II. The goal was to undermine the German and Italian occupations. This necessitated supporting Communist resistance groups. In Albania, the US and UK supported the Communist movement headed by Enver Hoxha. Why did the US and UK support Communist groups which were determined to set-up Communist regimes? The policy was: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Winston Churchill stated that the only criteria of support was whether the guerrillas were killing German soldiers.

During the war, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) had armed and advised Enver Hoxha and his guerrilla forces. Now they were determined to overthrow the very regime they had put into power. The first British SOE liaison officers sent into Albania were Lt. Col. David Smiley and Neil “Billy” McLean. Along with Julian Amery, Alan Hare, Peter Kemp, John Hibberdine, and Tony Neel, they were known as “the musketeers”, who backed the Balli Kombetar. They all were right-wing, upper echelon apparatchiks of the British Empire who disdained any progressive or democratic movement. In their own words, they detested anyone or anything that smacked of “progressive ideas.” It was natural that they were the principal backers of the ultra-nationalist, right-wing Balli Kombetar movement.

Ironically and quixotically, they were forced to arm and support the Communist LNC Movement and Enver Hoxha. This was an absurd result. But the game was all about power. British and American intelligence operations in the Balkans make sense on the rationale that they were based on realpolitik, or power politics. The US and UK objective was to obtain pliant puppets and satellites and stooges in the Balkans. During the war, it was only the Communist forces that were perceived as fighting the German and Italian occupation forces. Part of this misperception was due to Communist sympathizers and double-agents such as H.A.R. “Kim” Philby who consciously and purposefully sought to create this image of the Communist resistance as the only genuine resistance against the Germans. So absurdly the US and UK were forced to support the very Communists that they later would attempt to overthrow through regime change. It was a short-term marriage of convenience necessitated by the fact that the major enemy that the US and UK faced at the time was Germany. It was a matter of priority.

The US even sent aid and weapons to a Communist country. Following the 1948 split between Joseph Stalin and Josip Broz Tito, the Yugoslav government requested through CIA channels that the US provide arms to Yugoslavia, fearing an invasion by the USSR. Frank Lindsay, the Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC) deputy to Frank Wisner, recalled: “Tito was the man for the West to back… We sent him five shiploads of weapons.”
The US and UK were also determined to keep the Communist guerrillas in Greece from taking power. Operation Valuable/Fiend was also a diversionary operation meant to deny bases for Greek Communist insurgents and to divert Soviet or Communist resources away from Greece.

In Italy, the first successful CIA operation was to sabotage the national elections in 1948 where the Communists were favored to win. The US and UK supported “democracy’ only when it meant that anti- or non-Communists would win.

A primary concern for both the British and US governments was the presence of Soviet advisers and potential Soviet naval and submarine bases on the Albanian coast. For Britain, always a colonial and imperialist sea power, securing sea lanes to British colonies, such as India, was paramount. Soviet submarines and destroyers in the Albanian port of Valona threatened British control of the Mediterranean, an important sea route to India, the largest British colony, and to the Suez Canal and the oil of the Middle East. Albania under Hoxha established close ties with the Soviet Union and neighboring Yugoslavia following the war. There were even plans to form a Balkan federation which would have included Yugoslavia, Albania, and Bulgaria. Soviet advisers were reported to have arrived in Albania at this time.

Outright military clashes between Albanian and British forces began on October 22, 1946 when two British navy destroyers, Saumarez and Volafge, were damaged by mines in the three-mile-wide Corfu channel. The British destroyers sustained heavy damage while 43 men on board the vessels were killed. Britain retaliated by retaining ten million pounds of gold which the Albanian government had deposited in the Bank of England during the war. In April, 1946, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled against Albania, but the Albanian government refused to accept the judgment. There was unrelenting hostility between Albania and the UK that preceded the launch of Operation Valuable.

Operation Valuable/Fiend

British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin approved the MI6 operation to overthrow the Hoxha regime in February, 1949. The chief of MI6, Stewart Menzies, was not enthusiastic about the paramilitary operation but saw it as a way to appease the former SOE “stinks and bangs people.” The Albanian regime change was a rollback operation meant to “detach” Albania, a “captive nation”, from the Soviet bloc. Strategically, the UK and US objective was to establish a strategic presence on the Balkan peninsula. The British wanted the US to finance the operation and to provide bases. Senior British intelligence officer William Hayter, who chaired the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), came to Washington in March with a group of Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) members and Foreign Office staff that included Gladwyn Jebb, Earl Jellicoe, and Peter Dwyer of MI6 and a Balkans specialist. They met with Robert Joyce of the US State Department’s Policy and Planning Staff (PPS) and Frank Wisner, who was the head of the Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC), which was administered by the CIA. Wisner had been an attorney who had represented the financial interests of wealthy Albanian refugees who had been members of the Nazi-fascist collaborative group, the Balli Kombetar. So there had also been a monetary connection between US intelligence and the former Nazi/fascist Albanian Balli Kombetar members.

The strategic goal was to establish a foothold on the Balkan peninsula. Before this could occur, the Soviet-backed Hoxha regime had to be overthrown. According to Wisner, the Albanian operation was to be “a clinical experiment to see whether larger rollback operations would be feasible elsewhere.” Amery revealed that the British planned to recruit Balli Kombetar insurgents in the regime change against the Hoxha government. He outlined his plans for the proposed operation to the military commander of the Balli Kombetar, Abas Ermenji.

On May 20, 1949, Harold Perkins, the director of the Special Operations Branch, Neil McLean and Ermenji flew to Rome to meet with Midhat Frasheri, the wartime leader and founder of the Nazi/fascist Balli Kombetar, to discuss the operation. Frasheri was supportive of the operation. Amery believed that “clandestine operations directed at Hoxha would lead to a major uprising” the success of which would “depend on the million odd Albanians living in the Yugoslav Kosovo region.” So Kosovo was always crucial to the planners and organizers of Operation Valuable/Fiend.

Recruiting Albanian Nazis and Fascists

The recruitment for Operation Valuable/Fiend consisted of 40 per cent from the Balli Kombetar, 40 percent from the monarchist Legalite or Legaliteti, and the rest from other Albanian factions. Midhat Frasheri (1880-1949) was a founder and leader of the Balli Kombetar (National Front). He was a known Nazi and fascist collaborator committed to creating a Greater Albania that would include Kosovo-Metohija. He initially fled to Turkey after the war to escape war crimes charges and prosecution as a Nazi-fascist collaborator, then moved to Italy. He later settled as a refugee in London. He was brought to New York City by the US to lead the émigré Albanians. He died suddenly, however, on October 3, 1949 of a heart attack at the Lexington Hotel in New York.

Frasheri had initially approached the US Ambassador in Rome in 1947 proposing to bring 50 Albanian former pro-Nazi, pro-fascist refugee leaders to the US to allegedly combat Albanian Communist infiltrators in the United States. That same year, the Hoxha regime had made a request to the Italian government that Albanian collaborators and war criminals be extradited to Albania. Many of the Albanian BK leaders were interned in Italian camps at the time. Fearing extradition, Frasheri sought US help.

The plan was initially rejected by the US State Department because many on Frasheri’s list of 50 were on a 1948 publication by the Albanian government which identified them as major Nazi-fascist collaborators and war criminals. The State Department held that it did “not believe it would be appropriate” to allow the BK entry into the US because it would “sooner or later occasion embarrassment to this Government.” These BK members “had collaborated with the Germans and Italians in the war.”

The way the US government got around these restrictions was by creating “private organizations” and “fronts” which would provide “plausible deniability” because official sanction and connections could be concealed. The privatization ploy was effective in organizing former Nazi and fascist war criminals by the US and UK governments during the Cold War. It was part of a larger US government scheme known as Bloodstone which recruited “collaborators” and “war criminals” for covert operations, “émigré liberation projects”. Carmel Offie was one of the major organizers. Hasan Dosti was brought to the US in April, 1949, although he lacked a passport. Dosti was to set up an Albanian National Committee in Exile. On May 12, Robert Joyce obtained a passport for Midhat Frasheri to enter the US based on the rationale that it was in the “national interest”. So Frasheri was granted a US visa, due to the efforts of Robert Joyce, the US State Department liaison with the CIA.

Frasheri brought with him Mustafa Merlika-Kruja, the former fascist premier of Greater Albania from 1941 to 1943 who advocated the genocide of the Kosovo Serbs, Hasan Dosti, a Justice Minister in the fascist regime, and Kosovar Muslim Xhafer Deva, who had been instrumental in the creation of the Nazi Skanderbeg SS Division that systematically murdered Kosovo Serbs and which had rounded up Kosovo Jews who were subsequently murdered in the gas ovens at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The Kosovar Deva was directly responsible for the deportation of the Jews and their subsequent deaths. These former Albanian Nazis and fascists established the CIA-financed National Committee for a Free Albania. Among other things, this group recruited Albanian refugees who were sent on failed infiltration missions in Albania. The British double agent Kim Philby oversaw Operation Valuable/Fiend and kept the Soviets and the Hoxha regime apprised of the clandestine operations. Many of these Albanian recruits were captured and tried as spies and imprisoned or executed by the Communist Enver Hoxha regime.

One person’s war criminal is another person’s freedom fighter. This is clearly exemplified by the US and UK position on alleged Albanian war criminals and collaborators such as those of the Balli Kombetar. Enver Hoxha recalled making official requests that Albanian war criminals and collaborators be turned over for trial, but the US and UK refused his requests:

We made official requests to the British and American governments for the extradition of war criminals, not only Albanians, but also Italians and Germans, who had stained their hands with blood in Albania and were now under their jurisdiction. Contrary to the declarations and the joint commitments of the allies during the war and the decisions which were taken later on this question, they turned a deaf ear and did not hand them over to us. On the contrary, they kept the chiefs in luxury hotels, while they trained their ‘fighting men’ in Rome, Munich, London, Athens and elsewhere.

Xhafer Deva, who was from Kosovo, had been the Kosovar Albanian Muslim Minister of the Interior under the Italian fascist-sponsored Greater Albania. Deva lived in the United States after the war. He died in 1978 in Palo Alto, California. Hasan Dosti had been the Minister of Justice in the Italian-sponsored Greater Albania regime. He lived in Los Angeles, California in 1988. Mustafa Merlika-Kruja had been the Albanian premier of Greater Albania from 1941 to 1943. He died in 1958 in New York. Rexhep Mitrovica was an Albanian official in the Nazi German-sponsored Greater Albanian government in July 10, 1944, when Germany had re-occupied Kosovo and Albania..

The number of Jews killed in Greater Albania during the Holocaust is estimated at 591. Albanians played a major role in the Holocaust. Many of the leaders the CIA and MI6 recruited for Operation Valuable/Fiend were directly involved in the murder of the Jews of Greater Albania.

The Balli Kombetar (BK) or National Front was founded and led by the former Albanian diplomat Midhat Frasheri and Abas Ermneji. The BK was set up essentially to retain Kosovo as part of Albania after the war. This was the defining platform of the BK Movement, the annexation of Kosovo. The BK was a right-wing, ultra-nationalist Greater Albania movement, which was anti-monarchist and thus regarded as “republican”. This became a propaganda selling point for the former BK members after the war by their American and British spook handlers/minders. The BK was made up primarily of Tosks with their main area of support in the Valona region of southern Albania. Unlike the Communist National Liberation Movement headed by Enver Hoxha and the Zogist monarchist Legalite Movement headed by Abas Kupi established in November, 1943, the Balli Kombetar was unique in that its platform consisted of retaining Kosovo as part of the Axis-created Greater Albania.

The war-time collaboration of the Balli Kombetar with the German and Italian forces was well-documented. In a December 17, 1943 SOE report, Brig. E.M. “Trotsky” Davies acknowledged that the Balli Kombetar and the Zogist groups “are co-operating with Germans, who are exploiting them with arms in large quantities, setting them to guard main roads, police towns, and lead patrols thus freeing the German troops.” He further noted that the Balli Kombetar had consistently refused to fight the German occupation forces: “I consider the Allies’ attitude should be made public forthwith, showing quislings, traitors and non-resisters to Germans will receive appropriate punitive treatment from the Allies in due course.” The musketeers themselves conceded that the BK nationalist “collaborate with the Germans.” Three weeks after making his report, Davies was ambushed by a pro-Nazi BK group in Albania. Moreover, the German emissary in Tirana had acknowledged that there had been “direct collaboration with the BK.”

In the July 1944 R and A report L38836 by the OSS on Albania entitled “Political and Internal Conditions”, it was stated that “Xhafer Deva, Rexhep Mitrovic and Midhat Frasheri are with the Germans….Anti-semitic measures are being adopted now. A captured SS document “revealed that Deva had been responsible for the deportation of ‘Jews, Communists and partisans’ to extermination camps as well as for punitive raids by the SS Skanderbeg Division. The small mountain territory had few Jews, so relatively few were captured and killed.” Christopher Simpson, in Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and its Effects on the Cold War, noted that relatively few Jews were captured and killed but “not for lack of trying by the Balli Kombetar organization and the Albanian SS” which had orchestrated “a series of anti-semitic purges that rounded up about 800 people, the majority of whom were deported and murdered.” At the Wannsee Conference, the Germans listed only 200 Jews in Albania. Moreover, the Italian occupation was chiefly responsible for the so-called rescue of Albanian Jews by their intervention. Deva was also accused of responsibility for “the Tirana massacre” which occurred on February 4, 1944, carried out by the German Gestapo “in collaboration with the Albanian gendarmerie.” By the summer of 1944, units of the Balli Kombetar were “integrated into the German command.”

When the Germans occupied Kosovo and Albania following the Italian surrender in 1943, they lacked the manpower to control Greater Albania. What the Germans relied on was “political conciliation,” that is, gaining Albanian support for the German occupation by promising them fulfillment of their Greater Albania illusions by ensuring them that Kosovo would be part of a Greater Albania. The Germans appealed “to the type of Albanian nationalist and republican represented in the Balli Kombetar.” The German forces created a Regency Council to govern Greater Albania, which consisted of Lef Nosi, Anton Harapi, and the pre-war Prime Minister Mehdi Frasheri, the brother of Midhat Frasheri, the leader of the BK. The German occupation forces also created an Albanian army which was under the leadership of General Prenk Previsi and a gendarmerie under Xhafer Deva, the Minister of the Interior from Kosovo. The German occupation authorities also sponsored the creation of the Second League of Prizren and put Deva in charge of it as the president. The Germans expanded the Kosovo Albanian four armed battalions in the SS Division Skanderbeg in 1944, which fought against the Communist LNC, the Yugoslav partisans, and systematically murdered Kosovo Serbs and which rounded up Kosovo Jews who were subsequently murdered.

Pixie insertions

Midhat Frasheri was “the lynchpin” of the plan to send commandos into Albania. The Committee for Free Albania included several collaborators, and alleged war criminals. James McCarger, the first US commander of Operation Fiend, was dissatisfied that Hasan Dosti was part of this group. Dosti had been the Justice Minister of the fascist Italian-sponsored Greater Albania. McCarger stated: “I and several others screamed bloody murder on this. I said, you can’t use somebody with that background, it’s a blot on everybody’s escutcheon.” Dosti was accompanied by “a bevy of Hitler-era stooges” which included the Kosovar Muslim Xhafer Deva “who used the SS Skanderbeg Division in a massacre of Albanian partisans” and to round up Kosovo Jews who were murdered in the concentration camps. There were “voluminous files” in the possession of the US government that documented Deva’s Nazi past. Nevertheless, these objections were dismissed by the US and these former Nazi-fascist Albanian leaders would play a major role in Cold War operations by the CIA. A US intelligence official maintained that Deva was a “pure patriot” and a “person of uncompromising personal honor.” It was held that hiring and training such Nazi collaborators was in the US national interest. There were thus Nazis and there were Nazis. Some former Nazis were of much greater service to the US in the Cold War so their Nazi past was spin doctored away as if by magic.

The National Security Act of July 27, 1947 established the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The President Harry Truman Administration created the Central Intelligence Organization (CIA) as the successor to the war-time Office of Special Operations (OSS), which Truman had disbanded in 1945. The CIA was known as the Central Intelligence Group initially when it was headed first by Rear Admiral Sidney Souers and then by Hoyt Vandenberg. Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter headed the CIA from 1947 to 1950, he was the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). The CIA was set up specifically as a tool in the Cold War, an independent agency that reported to the President and was overseen by Congressional panels.

In September, 1949, British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin came to Washington to discuss Operation Valuable/Fiend with US government officials. The CIA released a report that concluded that “a purely internal Albanian uprising at this time is not indicated, and, if undertaken, would have little chance of success.” The CIA asserted that the Hoxha regime had a 65,000 man regular army and a security force of 15,000. There were intelligence reports that there were 1,500 Soviet “advisers” and 4,000 “technicians” in Albania helping to train the Albanian army. NATO was concerned that the USSR was building a submarine base at Valona. On September 6, 1949, when NATO met for the first time in Washington, Bevin proposed that “a counter-revolution” be launched in Albania. US Secretary of State Dean Acheson was in agreement. The US Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted to use Valona as a potential forward naval base for NATO to establish US control of the Mediterranean. NATO, established as a defensive military alliance of the North Atlantic region, was now committed to launching offensive covert operations against a sovereign nation in the Balkans. NATO member countries agreed to support the overthrow of the Hoxha regime in Albania and to eliminate Soviet influence in the Mediterranean region. Bevin wanted to place King Zog on the throne as the leader of Albania once Hoxha was overthrown.

On October 3, 1949, the first group of 20 Albanian commandos, known as the “pixies’ by SIS, were landed on the Albanian coastline south of Valona, which was the former territory of the Balli Kombetar. This was the start of Operation Valuable/Fiend. The pixies had been brought across the Corfu channel on a British vessel, Stormie Seas. British intelligence officials had trained the Albanians since July on Malta. Albanian government security forces interdicted the commandos, killing four and forcing the others to flee south to Greece.

The US became directly involved in the pixie insertions in 1950. The US recruitment of the OPC commandos was disguised by creating “labor battalions” under US Army command in Germany. Carmel Offie set up Company 400 with the help of Lawrence de Neufville, a CIA “special adviser”. The Albanian recruits were assembled in July, 1950 by Major Caush Ali Bashom, a member of the Balli Kombetar. A Radio Free Albania was set up as well to broadcast CIA propaganda into Albania. In August, 1950, the US air dropped propaganda leaflets over Korca. On November 19, the US airdropped 9 Albanian commandos by parachute drops into Albania. They were either captured or escaped into Yugoslavia. The Sigurimi, the Soviet-trained Albanian secret police, was able to anticipate the landings and to interdict the commandos.

By 1952, the CIA had taken over all the intelligence operations of the British in the Balkans. On July 23, 1951, the US air dropped 12 commandos in Albania. Six were killed immediately, four were surrounded and burned to death in a house, and two were captured. The operation was a complete disaster. Abas Ermenji did not want to witness any more of his Balli Kombetar followers to take “another tumble through the meat grinder” and so discouraged any more missions. Wisner, nevertheless, sought to continue the pixie incursions, having the support of CIA Deputy Director Allen Dulles. The CIA airdropped Hamit Matjani, the Tiger, in 1952, who was killed during this operation, his 16th mission. Dulles stated: “At least we’re getting the experience we need for the next war.”

Up to 200 agents would be killed during the operation with an estimated additional several thousand Albanian civilians killed in reprisal. Abas Ermenji stated: “Our ‘allies’ wanted to make use of Albania as a guinea-pig, without caring about the human losses, for an absurd enterprise that was condemned to failure.” Halil Nerguti stated: “We were used as an experiment. We were a small part of a big game, pawns that could be sacrificed.” There is no question that the CIA and MI6 used the operation as a small-scale exercise in regime change. The stakes were small. Failure would not be noticed. John H. Richardson, the CIA Director of the South-East Division, terminated Operation Fiend and by 1954 the Company 400 was disbanded and the training facilities in Heidelberg, Germany shut down, as well as the CIA base on the Greek island. The remaining Albanians were resettled in the US, UK, and the Commonwealth countries.

The CIA financed a new Albanian Committee of the Assembly of Captive European Nations (ACEN) which was controlled by the Political Committee, made up of former members of the Balli Kombetar, who dominated this organization for much of the 1950s.The ACEN was headed by Nuci Kota, Zog’s military commander, who had lead the Free Albania Committee and had founded the Albanian National Committee. The former Nazi-fascist wartime collaborator Hasan Dosti was a key figure in ACEN. Gratian Yatsevich, the new commander of Operation Fiend, inserted Albanian members of the Catholic Independenza group, many of whom had collaborated with the fascist Italian regime, into the Free Albania Committee.

During Operation Valuable/Fiend, the US and UK disregarded Albanian’s sovereignty, engaged in subversion, subterfuge, interference in the affairs of an independent nation, and sought to implement a regime change, which was an act of war and aggression. And this was what CIA propaganda said was “the free world”.

Conclusion: Balli Kombetar and KLA

Operation Valuable/Fiend and the recruitment of former Albanian Nazis and fascists from Albania proper and Kosovo provides the missing link between the Greater Albania created by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and the Balli Kombetar and the KLA/UCK Movement supported by Joseph DioGuardi, Thomas Lantos, Robert Dole, Joseph Biden, Richard Holbrooke, and Madeleine Albright. The recruitment of the Nazi-fascist Greater Albania Balli Kombetar by the CIA and MI6 and Operation Valuable/Fiend are the origins and the roots of US involvement in Albania/Kosovo. It was inevitable that US foreign policy would focus on Kosovo. The fascist foreign minister of Italy Count Galeazzano Ciano, who was the architect of the fascist greater Albania from 1939-1943, saw Kosovo as a knife aimed at the back of Yugoslavia. When Germany occupied Kosovo and Albania, their occupation policy focused on the creation of a Greater Albania with their support of the Second League of Prizren and their sanction of the genocide of Kosovo Serbs and Jews. Similarly, US foreign policy during the Cold War focused on using Kosovo as a knife to extort, blackmail, and pressure Yugoslavia, or as a way to destroy the Communist Yugoslavia. Like Nazi Germany, the US and the NATO countries used Kosovo as a way to destroy Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was the only obstacle to the NATO takeover of eastern Europe. Kosovo provided the means by which to establish NATO control and occupation of Europe. The KLA/UCK terrorist/separatist group provided the vehicle by which to achieve NATO control. The KLA was the successor to the Balli Kombetar. Operation Valuable/Fiend thus is the missing link between the fascist Greater Albania created in World War II and the US support of Greater Albania during and after the Cold War. Operation Valuable/Fiend provided the modus operandi or MO. This was how the US allowed the former Croatian Ustasha/Roman Catholic alleged war criminals to escape through Italy and the Vatican, through the “ratlines” established by Croatian Roman Catholic priest Father Krunoslav Draganovic. This was how the powerful ultra-nationalist and neo-Ustasha separatist lobby was created in the US with the backing of US Roman Catholic groups. The objective was always the same. The US and Britain sought to control the Balkans and eastern Europe through NATO. The game was always about power. Human rights, humanitarianism, genocide, and ethnic cleansing had nothing to do with it.

Bibliography

Dorril, Stephen. MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service. NY: The Free Press, 2000.

Kane, Steve. “The 21st SS Mountain Division.” Siegrunen: The Waffen-SS in Historical Perspective. October-December 1984. Volume 6 Number 6, pp.22-30.

Prados, John. Presidents’ Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations from World War II through Iranscam. NY: Quill, 1986.

Simpson, Christopher. Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and its Effects on the Cold War. NY: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988.

Source: http://www.pogledi.rs/en/the-cia-and-greater-albania/

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Photo of evidence: A KLA Leaders Hasim Tachi (today "PM" of Kosova Republic) and Agim Cheku with the NATO and the EU top officials in 1999 after the war

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Carl K. Savich: “Falsifying History: The Holocaust and Greater Albania”

History is in many ways a myth we create for ourselves. History is constantly falsified to justify wars and territorial claims. Albanian apologists have falsified the role Albania played in the Holocaust to justify an illegal US/NATO war against Serbia and to allow for the creation of a Greater Albania that would include the Serbian province of Kosovo-Metohija.

The Jewish victims of the Holocaust in Albania are estimated at 591 from 1941 to 1944, when a Greater Albania was sponsored by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. There were 33 known families of Albanian Jews living in pre-war Albania. The largest Jewish community consisted of 15 Jewish families living in Vlora. According to the 1930 census, there were 204 Jews living in Albania. At the Wannsee Conference in 1942, when the Final Solution was organized, the total Jewish population of Albania was listed as 200 Jews. By 1939 there were Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria.

The two factors that explain why more Jews in Albania were not killed are that Albania was under Italian control and Albania had a very small Jewish population. Italian forces in Albania rejected the Final Solution as “the German disease” and did not enforce anti-Jewish measures. This is why Albanian Jews were “rescued” in Albania, not because of anything the Albanians did themselves. There was no history of ideological anti-Semitism in Albania. But this was true of every country in the Balkans. A history of anti-Semitism did not exist in Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Hungary, or Romania. So Albania was not unique in this regard in any way. The small number of Jews in Albania also played a key role in why they were not killed. During the Italian occupation, they were able to disperse and blend in the general population. When Germany occupied Albania in 1943, the Jewish population was already beyond reach.

What role did Albania play in the Holocaust? Albanian apologists maintain that no Jews were killed in Albania during the Holocaust. Is this accurate? What is the context of this statement? Albanian apologists have consciously and methodically falsified the Albanian role in the Holocaust. The way this was done was to totally suppress the fact that Kosovo-Metohija was a part of Albania from 1941 to 1944. Also left out is the fact that a Greater Albania was in fact created that included not only Kosovo-Metohija, Kosova in the Greater Albania ideology, but southern Serbian territory, territory in southern Montenegro, and western Macedonia, or Illirida. Albanian apologists distort history by implying that it was Albanians that rescued Jews. But in fact it was the Italian occupation forces that opposed the Final Solution and who rescued Jews. Another falsification is the omission of the role played by Xhafer Deva, a Kosovar Albanian Muslim, in the Greater Albanian state and in the Holocaust.

Albanian apologists falsify the history of the Holocaust by suppressing the fact that it was Adolf Hitler who first created a Greater Albania that included the Serbian province of Kosovo-Metohija. They assiduously cover-up the fact that it was Adolf Hitler who set the precedent for an “independent” Kosova, an ethnically pure Albanian Kosova. Albanian apologists have carefully suppressed and deleted this fact.

Rescue in Albania by Harvey Sarner was published in book form in 1997 just in time for the Kosovo conflict and the start of the KLA terrorism campaign sponsored by the US/EU/NATO. It began being used as a propaganda tract immediately. The book was to pave the way for US military intervention in Serbia. It was first published as a booklet in 1992 as “The Jews of Albania”. It was released following the aliyah or emigration of the entire Jewish population out of Albania. They settled in Tel Aviv and other towns and cities in Israel. Little is revealed about the author. This throws up red flags. But Sarner did play a major role in the emigration of Albanian Jews to Israel. So the publication initially was payback or a goodwill gesture from Sarner for the emigration out of Albania to Israel. Israel got 300 new citizens and Albania got the pamphlet “The Jews of Albania”, a thank you note.

Who is Harvey Sarner? He is a third generation American of Jewish-Polish descent. Sarner is a retired American attorney. He is not a historian. The book is essentially a hack job. Sarner has paid or “subsidized” visits to Israel of “Righteous Gentiles”. He has written another book, General Anders and the Soldiers of the Second Polish Corps in 1997. He is the chairman of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Jewish Foundation for Christian Rescuers. He has worked with Jews in Poland, Ukraine, and Albania. His primary focus is on Jewish emigration to Israel and in documenting those non-Jews who have “rescued” Jews during the Holocaust.

Rescue in Albania is nothing more than a thinly-veiled propaganda tract. His subtitle is: “One Hundred Percent of Jews in Albania Rescued from Holocaust.” The book features an Albanian and Israeli flag on the cover. Van Christo, the Albanian president of the Frosina Foundation, has used the book for “fund raising purposes” to obtain money for the separatist campaign in Kosovo. Lobby money can buy you a lot of lies. That is the American way. And Sarner knows that.

In this propaganda tract, Sarner says nothing about the 21st SS Division “Skanderbeg”, made up primarily of Kosovar Muslim recruits, nothing about the genocide committed by Albanians against the Serbian and Jewish populations of Kosovo and Bosnia-Hercegovina, and Croatia. He says nothing about the destruction of Serbian Orthodox churches and cathedrals in Kosovo. He says nothing about the murder of Serbian Orthodox priests. Is it ignorance? It is willful ignorance. He suppresses and deletes anything negative about Albania and Albanians. A fundamental aspect of propaganda is that it is one-sided, subjective, and tells only half the story. Under this definition, Rescue in Albania is pure propaganda.

In October, 1997, the Albanian American Civic League (AACL, Lobbi Shqiptar), headed by Joe DioGuardi, began a systematic campaign to use the book by Sarner as a propaganda tool in the upcoming Kosovo separatist/terrorist war. The AACL had been founded in 1989 by DioGuardi to revive the Greater Albania ideology established by the 1878 First League of Prizren. In 1943, Nazi Germany re-established the dormant Greater Albania ideology or program by establishing the Second League of Prizren under Xhafer Deva.

DioGuardi’s agenda for the AACL is stated as follows: “to liberate the seven million Albanian people in the Balkans from hostile Slavic domination.” This is an echo of Hitler’s statements regarding the Sudeten Germans in 1938. It is nothing less than a racist, neo-fascist and neo-Nazi ideology and campaign of expansion, to create a Greater Albania. The AACL requested that Thomas Lantos and Benjamin Gilman write a Forward to Rescue in Albania. The League distributed 10,000 copies, mostly to influential Jews in the US as propaganda for the coming separatist conflict in Kosovo-Metohija. Congressman Gilman and James Traficant then sent copies of the book with personal letters to each Jewish member of Congress with a “Dear Colleague” letter to other House members.

U.S. Representative James Traficant, D-Ohio, was later found guilty on bribery and corruption charges. A House panel voted to expel Traficant in 2002 from the US Congress. This shows that the Albanian apologists will say and do anything to support Greater Albania, even break the law. It shows that you can buy anything with a bribe. Money can buy a lot of lies. And this is the real danger of all propaganda. Anyone with any money can falsify the facts and manipulate others to kill. Bribes can buy a lot of propaganda, or PR or spin. And the goal is to get people to kill other people and to take their land. Wars come and go, but propaganda methods do not change.

Sarner begins his book on the Holocaust with a discussion of Greater Albania, The Four Vilayets” under Ottoman Turkey: Janina, Shkodra, Kosovo, and Manastir. This is merely a parroting of the Greater Albania ideology. This is just recycled by Sarner from handouts his Albanian minders provided to him. There is no question that Sarner has been provided Albanian handlers to help him with his facts. What Sarner was not told is that these so-called Albanian Vilayets have non-Albanian majorities and were never part of Albania. This is the myth of Greater Albania. Janina is in northern Greece and has never been part of Albania. The population is majority Greek. There are almost no Albanians in that former Ottoman Turkish “vilayet”. Manastir is in southern Macedonia which is majority Macedonian with a minuscule Albanian population. It was never part of Albania. Shkodra is the territory around southern Montenegro. Montenegro has a minority Albanian population and has never been part of Albania. Kosovo-Metohija is the cradle of the Serbian Orthodox church and of Serbian culture. The towns, cities, and villages all have Serbian names from the medieval period when it was part of Serbia. The oldest Serbian Orthodox churches are located in Kosovo. Albanian settlement and colonization during the Ottoman Turkish period could not erase its Serbian heritage. Moreover, Kosovo-Metohija was never a part of Albania. In fact, there had never been an Albanian state until 1912. But Sarner is silent about all of this.

There are many factual errors and mistakes showing Sarner’s total and complete ignorance of the actual Holocaust history of Albania. He referred to “General Futzstun, the Gestapo chief…” There was no such person named Futzstun. In fact, this was SS Brigadefuehrer Josef Fitzhum (1896-1945), who was the Higher SS and Police Leader (Hoherer SS und Polizeifuehrer, HSSPF) in Albania. Fitzhum was responsible for internal security, the war against the resistance or guerrillas, and the implementation of the Final Solution. He assumed control in Albania after German forces occupied Albania following the surrender of Italy in September, 1943. He had been the police chief in Vienna from 1938 to 1940. Fitzhum created the 21st SS Division Skanderbeg with Xhafer Deva, made up mostly of Kosovar Muslim Albanians. As noted by Raul Hilberg in The Destruction of the European Jews (1961), Skanderbeg played a major role in the Holocaust, rounding up the Jews in Greater Albania who were subsequently sent to Bergen-Belsen where they were killed.

Sarner sought to make a distinction between Albania proper and Kosovo. He defined Kosovo as part of “the annexed territories”. But this is a bit of a ruse and a phony scam. Kosovo was made a part of Albania in 1941. Kosovo was called the “New Albania”. The Interior Minister of Albania was a Kosovan or Kosovar Albanian Muslim, Xhafer Deva. Deva was one of the most influential Albanians in the Albanian Government. And he was from Kosovo. Sarner seeks to obfuscate this obvious fact by creating a spurious and meaningless distinction.

Sarner admitted that Jews in Kosovo were being sent to the concentration camps where they were killed: “All around them…in the annexed territories, Jews were being transported to the death camps.” He admits that Kosovo Jews were being killed. He doesn’t admit that it was the Albanians who rounded up the Jews so that they could be killed. Why the omission? He is writing propaganda. He seeks to falsify the Albanian role in the Holocaust.

He grossly exaggerated the uniqueness of the “rescue” of Jews in Albania: “In Athens, the Jews refused to supply a list and there was a 50% survival rate.” He is factually wrong. In fact, the survival rate was 66% in Athens for Jews. Athens, like Albania, was in the Italian occupation zone. This explains why the Jews were “rescued”, not because of Albanian actions. It would be analogous to a cheerleader claiming credit for a win of the football team. In short, the Albanians had nothing to do with the so-called rescue. This is giving the Albanians credit for something that they were not responsible for. It is a falsification of history. It is out and out propaganda. By contrast, in Bulgaria, an estimated 50,000 Bulgarian Jews were “rescued”. But Bulgarians did allow the Jews of Macedonia and Thrace, then a part of a Greater Bulgaria, to be deported and killed by German forces.

Why this obsession and constant harping on “the list”? Sarner wrote his book when the Holocaust movie Schindler’s List (1993) was released. He wants to make the connection very easy to follow for his readers. He doesn’t want to complicate things for them too much. Oskar Schindler did not divulge a “list” of Jews to the Nazis, and the Albanians did not divulge a list to the Nazis. It is very easy and simple to follow. Oskar Schindler was a “Righteous Gentile”, as were the Albanian “Christians and Muslims” who “rescued” Jews. This explains why there is an overemphasis on “the list”.

Sarner does not examine World War II at any length. Although his subject matter is purportedly on World War II and the Holocaust, there is very little on the Holocaust itself. He finally gets around to discussing the Holocaust period in “Chapter 7″, which he titled “The Germans”. Most of the book is on Jewish settlement in Albania and the 1930s period when Jewish-American Herman Bernstein was the US Ambassador to Albania. There is almost no account of the Holocaust and World War II. Why is this? This is because Sarner does not want to elucidate, but obfuscate. He wants to cover-up, not reveal.

He starts off with an incorrect assertion: ‘The fact that the Albanian Government and people did not cooperate with the Germans…” According to Sarner, Xhafer Deva, the Kosovar Muslim Interior Minister denied the list of Jews to the German forces on page 43. He offers no evidence for these statements. Factually, the Albanian Government and people did cooperate with the Germans. Indeed, Deva helped to organize the Nazi 21st Waffen SS Division “Skanderbeg”. Moreover, there was an Albanian Muslim Battalion of about 300 men in the Bosnian Muslim 13th Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS “Handschar/Handzar”. The SS designed special gray skull caps for the Albanian Nazi SS troops. The Albanian Skanderbeg SS Division also had its own symbol created by the SS and worn as a collar patch, a goat’s head helmet supposedly modeled on the one worn by Skanderbeg himself. Sarner doesn’t even discuss the Balli Kombetar (BK), an ultra-nationalist group committed to creating a Greater Albania that would include Kosovo. Sarner says nothing about the known and widespread collaboration of the Balli Kombetar with the Italian and German occupation forces.

Sarner maintained that in 1943, the German occupation forces made a request for a list of Jews living in Greater Albania. In the spring of 1944, the Nazis asked the Regency for the list. The real reason the Jews in Albania proper were not rounded up and deported was because under Italian occupation they had dispersed and were difficult to concentrate. But in Kosovo-Metohija, then part of a Greater Albania, and Xhafer Deva’s birthplace, Albanians did round up all the known Jews, who were subsequently sent to the death camps and killed. The reference to “the list” is a smokescreen and a bit of pettifoggery.

The reason there was a “rescue” in Albania was because the Italian government did not support the Final Solution and prevented its implementation. The German anti-Jewish policy was termed “the German disease” by the Italians.

Albanians, however, did play a major role in the Holocaust, the mass killings of Albanian Jews. Sarner plays dumb. All anyone has to do is to check Raul Hilberg’s seminal Holocaust book, The Destruction of European Jewry from 1961 to learn that Albanians played a key and fundamental role in the Holocaust. Sarner calls Kosovo a part of “The Annexed Territories”. He doesn’t reveal that Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini created a Greater Albania. He doesn’t tell us that Kosovo-Metohjia, parts of Montenegro, southern Serbia, and western Macedonia were all parts of a Greater Albania. Why? Because this is the exact same goal of today, of US foreign policy and of NATO. It is Adolf Hitler’s vision. But today, Hitler’s vision is taken up and revived by the US and NATO and Joe DioGuardi and Thomas Lantos. But Hitler did it first. But of course, Sarner is unaware of all this. His is a blissful ignorance. He does concede that Kosovo was made part of Albania: “In April, 1941″ Kosovo “was annexed to Albania…”

Here is what Sarner says about Kosovo: “The Jews in the ‘annexed area’ were not as fortunate as the Jews in Albania proper. Life in the annexed territories was not as secure and there were unfortunate incidents of Jews being abused by the local people.” So he does grudgingly admit that Albanians did participate in the anti-Semitic outrages against the Jewish population, although he does not use the word “Kosovar Muslim” or “Albanian” but refers to “the local people”.

There was a Jewish family that was killed in Albania. The Jewish family Ardel was killed by the Nazis in Albania, but Sarner qualifies this as being a family of partisans. They were killed not because they were Jew, but because they were partisans.

Sarner incorrectly implied that Albania escaped all the horrors of the Final Solution and Holocaust. But this is not true. Albania too experienced the Holocaust. The German occupation forces imposed anti-Jewish laws in Kosovo. Kosovo Jews wore “J” for “Juden” or “Jew”. Kosovo Jews wore white armbands with the word “Jude” in black letters. ID cards were stamped with a red “J”. Josef Fitzhum was determined to carry out the Final Solution in Albania. Fitzhum ordered the Jews of Vlora deported. And at least one Jewish family was killed.

Sarner finally got around to admitting that Albanians played an active and major role in the Holocaust: “In Prishtina, capital city of the annexed territories, the local authorities complied with German demands and jailed 60 Jewish men.”

The Albanian Government played an active role in the Holocaust. On April 1, 1942, the Albanian Minister of the Interior gave instructions to the Albanian Prefect of Police that Jews who came after the war started should be “gathered on a field of concentration.” On March 20, 1942, he had ordered that the Jews be imprisoned and a list of Jews provided. In Note C, The Fields of Concentration, Sarner conceded that this euphemistic language meant a concentration camp: “This was the name given to what were otherwise known as concentration camps. These were camps for civilians and…their populations were mainly Jews….The camps were surrounded by barbed wire….It was an ugly place.” This is a very roundabout and disingenuous and dishonest way to admit that the Albanian Government set up concentration camps for Jews in Albania. It is artful spin and propaganda. But it is also a malicious attempt at falsifying history. Sarner is rewriting history, creating a phony and bogus history.

Sarner even finally conceded that the Albanian Government and Albanian authorities took an active part in the extermination of European Jews: “In June, 1943…the Albanian police chief suggested the jailing of certain Jews:

‘According to our investigation the Jews listed below are dangerous because they are propaganderizing [sic] against the Axis (Rome-Berlin) and they want to organize and hold meetings. We think these people should be taken away from here as soon as possible to one of the concentration fields, because their staying here could be dangerous to the regime.’”

To complete the circle, Sarner finally grudgingly admits that the Albanian Government and people played a major role in the Holocaust and Final Solution: “In April, 1944, the Germans shipped 400 Jews from the annexed territories to Bergen-Belsen; 100 survived the war.”

Then Sarner creates a propaganda smokescreen by arguing absurdly that the Albanians only helped to kill only 40% of the Jewish population of Kosovo, then a part of Greater Albania: “According to our report the survival rate in Kosove [sic] was sixty percent, which made it, relatively, one of the areas with the highest percentage of survival in occupied Europe.” This is a patently absurd and nonsensical argument. It displays a bizarre moral calculus.

Finally, in Footnote 2, Sarner explained why he wrote the book and its ultimate purpose. The book was written essentially as a propaganda tract, a falsified history of the Holocaust, in order to garner support for the creation of a Greater Albania or “independent” Kosova. This is the method to Sarner’s madness. The book had a clear-cut goal and purpose all along. Propaganda is written for a specific purpose and goal. As Adolf Hitler himself noted, propaganda is not written for “blasй young gentlemen”, but to convince the masses, to persuade key groups, key target audiences. In this case, the target audience was powerful and influential establishment Jews in the US. Sarner parrots the Albanian and US State Department policy on the Serbian province of Kosovo-Metohija as follows: “The status of Kosova[sic], currently a part of Yugoslavia, is in contention today. Albanians favor either independence for Kosova or its being a part of Albania. The people of the area are ethnic Albanians.” Of course, this statement too is incorrect and is patently absurd. The borders of Yugoslavia are recognized by the United Nations and by international law. Yugoslavia, as a sovereign nation, has a right and duty top safeguard and protect its own internationally recognized and legal borders. But Sarner knows all that. Propaganda is not written to be rational. As Hitler noted, propaganda appeals to the emotions and subjective and irrational nature of man. This is what Sarner is appealing to.

What is the Kosovo conflict all about? Edith Durham in The Burden of the Balkans, published in 1905, explained the Albanian goal in Kosovo succinctly and clearly:

The Christian the Albanian persecutes is the Slav Christian, and this is the old, old race hatred. Of all the passions that sway human fortunes, race hatred is, perhaps, the strongest and the most lasting.

The Kosovo conflict is all about “race hatred”, what we call “racism” today. It is all about finishing the job Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini started. It is called genocide and ethnic cleansing. This is the real goal. This is why Sarner is falsifying the history.

Durham also argued that the Shqip or Albanian language is an “Aryan tongue”. The Nazi/fascist sponsors of Greater Albania in 1941 would also argue that the Albanians were part of the Aryan, or master race, a superior race.

In 1991, virtually the entire Jewish population of Albania left for Israel. The Jews were airlifted to Israel after the collapse of the Communist regime. Albania under the Communist regime of Enver Hoxha maintained no diplomatic relations with Israel. Hoxha abolished religion and created an atheistic state in Albania. Today, there are less than 40 Jews in all of Albania. They live in the capital Tirana. In Kosovo, the small Jewish population was ethnically cleansed out of Kosovo in 1999 along with Kosovo Serbs and other non-Albanians after NATO troops occupied the Serbian province. The Kosovo Jews fled to Belgrade. There are no more Jews living in Kosovo today, which is under NATO military occupation.

Bibliography

Durham, Edith. The Burden of the Balkans. London: Edward Arnold, 1905.
Fischer, Brend. Albania at War, 1939-1944. W. Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1999.
Hilberg, Raul. The Destruction of the European Jews. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, Inc., 1961.
Sarner, Harvey. Rescue in Albania. Cathedral City, CA: Brunswick Press, 1997.

Source: http://www.pogledi.rs/en/falsifying-his ... r-albania/

[Stonewall]

My own feelings are that the U.S. should never have gotten involved in the former Yugoslavia. Certainly the Kosovo situation with the bombing of Serbia is a disgrace upon this country. Now, of course churches are burned to the ground...

Clinton should have went after the people who were going after us, Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. They were the ones who were attacking the United States...

[Zionist Nationalist]

No such Country as Kosovo, its a stolen Serbian land.

[Rei Murasame]

Operation Valuable/Fiend and the recruitment of former Albanian Nazis and fascists from Albania proper and Kosovo provides the missing link between the Greater Albania created by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and the Balli Kombetar and the KLA/UCK Movement supported by Joseph DioGuardi, Thomas Lantos, Robert Dole, Joseph Biden, Richard Holbrooke, and Madeleine Albright. The recruitment of the Nazi-fascist Greater Albania Balli Kombetar by the CIA and MI6 and Operation Valuable/Fiend are the origins and the roots of US involvement in Albania/Kosovo. It was inevitable that US foreign policy would focus on Kosovo. The fascist foreign minister of Italy Count Galeazzano Ciano, who was the architect of the fascist greater Albania from 1939-1943, saw Kosovo as a knife aimed at the back of Yugoslavia. When Germany occupied Kosovo and Albania, their occupation policy focused on the creation of a Greater Albania with their support of the Second League of Prizren and their sanction of the genocide of Kosovo Serbs and Jews. Similarly, US foreign policy during the Cold War focused on using Kosovo as a knife to extort, blackmail, and pressure Yugoslavia, or as a way to destroy the Communist Yugoslavia. Like Nazi Germany, the US and the NATO countries used Kosovo as a way to destroy Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was the only obstacle to the NATO takeover of eastern Europe. Kosovo provided the means by which to establish NATO control and occupation of Europe.

In other words, Russians and Serbs are upset, and are telling people things that everyone already knows, as though it is supposed to be shocking.

I see no problem here, NATO clearly produced a magnificent outcome for everyone. This is how geostrategy works, NATO needed to secure the southern flank of Europe, and the disintegration of Yugoslavia followed by the accession of its component states to the EU, was a necessary precondition to bringing that objective about.

Also, for those who used to be part of Axis, you could say that it was also about revenge.

[Igor Antunov]

NATO needed to secure the southern flank of Europe

By setting up a sunni islamist bastion there?

The stuff you smoke Rei, it is becoming more potent by the day. Only explanation.

[Rei Murasame]

By setting up a sunni islamist bastion there?

A small problem to be dealt with later. That 'later' would happen to be basically about now.

The stuff you smoke Rei, it is becoming more potent by the day. Only explanation.

All I do is put the ducks in a row and choose the bigger threat first. Preventing Serbia from dragging the Balkans back into the Russian sphere was more important to NATO at that time (and rightfully so), than preventing Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo from accommodating a few crazed Islamists whose names were known to everyone and who should have been promptly put in a jail - or better yet, under the earth - when the job was done.

The fact that they didn't actually get around to cleaning up all the stray Islamists afterwards is not a flaw in the plan, but rather, a flaw in the execution of the plan. But there's still time to fix that, as the threat of ISIL recruitment has finally prompted people to take a second look at the untied loose end. Maybe someone will actually tie it off now.

[Igor Antunov]

A small problem to be dealt with later. That 'later' would happen to be basically about now.

Small problems have a tendency to run away from you. Look at what happened when small inconsequential little groups started getting gifts from the usual western suspects in Syria and Iraq. Much happened, and the solution to this 'little problem' is nowhere in sight. Or maybe you don't consider the trillions thrown away as relevant.

All I do is put the ducks in a row and choose the bigger threat first.

Last I checked it wasn't 1.5 million Russians settling in Germany, France and England every 12 months. They have a decidedly sunni flavour about them.



At this rate all the big bad Russian threat has to do is sit there waiting, until the west weakens/politically polarises itself so comprehensively that it can just waltz in and take.

[Conscript]

Rei, why does NATO have to exist to the expense of russians, Serbs, etc.? That's something I never understood, it didn't have to be that way.

[Decky]

Rei, why does NATO have to exist to the expense of russians, Serbs, etc.? That's something I never understood, it didn't have to be that way.

NATO was founded to fuck over the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union ceased to exist and the Soviet Union vanished rather than disbanding NATO the Americans decided to keep it going and to use it to fuck over the Russians for no real reason.

This was of course a mistake. The Russian bourgeoisie who had hijacked their county, loved capitalism, loved the west and hated their own people. Russia could have been bought into the western liberal-capitalist fold in a few years. Instead the west have been antagonistic to the Russian capitalist regime and turned a natural ally into a bitter enemy.

Don't try to find a logical reason when asking why NATO exists to fuck over Russians (or indeed why NATO still exists at all). There is none to be found. The US continues to hate Russians for being Communist even when Russia had stopped being Communist, they did it out of force of habit, there was no thought involved whatsoever.

[Rei Murasame]

Small problems have a tendency to run away from you. Look at what happened when small inconsequential little groups started getting gifts from the usual western suspects in Syria and Iraq. Much happened, and the solution to this 'little problem' is nowhere in sight. Or maybe you don't consider the trillions thrown away as relevant.

Again, there is a chronology built into that statement that I wrote. At the time, it was a 'little problem', and so they should have focussed on dealing the Russian problem first, and then as soon as they were done, deal with the Islamic problem. Unfortunately people did not deal with the Islamic problem, they didn't tie off that loose that end, so it has led to what you've described.

That doesn't mean that suppressing Russia's aspirations was a bad idea. It simply means that failing to arrest the Islamists after the job was done was a profoundly stupid oversight.

Last I checked it wasn't 1.5 million Russians settling in Germany, France and England every 12 months. They have a decidedly sunni flavour about them.

Well, last I checked, it is 2015, yes, so it would indeed be way past time to deal with this problem, because it has been about 15 - 20 years since the operation we are talking about ended, and yet this same nonsense is still going on.

Plus, I'm pretty sure that you're aware that many of my posts here are about the Muslim Question, and how the aforementioned oversight has had explosive ramifications since 2001. So I don't know why you'd try to make it look like I'm in any way downplaying that.

___________

Rei, why does NATO have to exist to the expense of russians, Serbs, etc.? That's something I never understood, it didn't have to be that way.

Because, completely contrary to what Decky is saying, this is not the Cold War II.

It's the Great Game II.

I've explained all of this before to you from just about every angle imaginable, why should I have go over it again? I'm frankly tired of doing it, and I wish people would stop asking me to do it, because I'm not interested in 'justifying' our actions to pro-Russians who are simply going to reask the same questions over and over again while pretending to be peaceniks. The whole world operates purely on mafia logic.

This is the eighth time you've raised this question, and this time I'm just not wasting the time. Seriously, fuck it. If Russians and their fans 'do not understand it', then I hope that they will continue to 'not understand it', as we lift all of 'their' assets in the Caucasus, the Caspian Sea and Central Asia off their hands.

[BritinChina]

Don't try to find a logical reason when asking why NATO exists to fuck over Russians (or indeed why NATO still exists at all). There is none to be found. The US continues to hate Russians for being Communist even when Russia had stopped being Communist, they did it out of force of habit, there was no thought involved whatsoever.

If you we're a citizen of the Baltic States then I suspect you'd disagree with that. As long as the Russians remained perturbed over the 'near abroad' exercising their democratic right as sovereign States to become closer aligned with the West then NATO continues to serve a useful purpose. That will remain so until such a time, if ever, that a Federal European military can take over the role of European security.

[Rei Murasame]

As long as the Russians remained perturbed over the 'near abroad' exercising their democratic right as sovereign States to become closer aligned with the West then NATO continues to serve a useful purpose. That will remain so until such a time, if ever, that a Federal European military can take over the role of European security.

Exactly. I didn't think I'd be able to agree with you on anything, but there it is. That is well said, I think.

[Political Interest]

What is the difference between the Cold War and Great Game II?

Wasn't the Cold War also a type of 'Great Game' simply with an ideological component?

I really fail to see how we can distinguish the two. In many ways the Cold War was a continuation of Great Game I and now Great Game II is just the normal geopolitics between Russia and England.