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Of
the war against terrorism, President Bush says, "You're either
with us or against us."
A New York Times article of 4 March by Joyce Walder, titled,
"Side
by Side in Life, and Now, in Death," sympathetically chronicles
the deaths of three Albanian-American brothers who went together to
Kosovo to fight and die along side the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
No one should be insensitive to the great loss and the tragedy that
has befallen the Bytyqi family. The loss of one's sons deeply affects
every family, regardless of ethnicity. Throughout the conflict in Kosovo,
unfortunately, Americans of Albanian descent constantly watched the
tragedy unfold before their eyes as portrayed by an anti-Serb, pro-Albanian
media and leaders bent on stirring up ethnic hatred. Seeing the long
lines of refugees seeking to escape the carnage and hearing exaggerated
reports of unspeakable atrocities, who would not be moved or encouraged
to join up with their fellow Albanians in what they perceived to be
a righteous jihad? The Bytyqi brothers probably never saw or wouldn't
believe anything contrary to what they were told, such as a UPI article
of 29 June 1999, titled "Internal refugee numbers overestimated,"
which reported, "As an international peacekeeping force moves into
Kosovo, they are not finding the large numbers of internally displaced
people anticipated, based on estimates from the United Nations, according
to Lt. Gen. Mike McDuffie, the Joint Staff s director of logistics.
We planned for what we thought was a potential disaster...and we just
haven't found it, McDuffie said. KFOR was expecting to find about half
a million people displaced from their homes. Instead, peacekeepers have
found only small pockets of people as refugees from outside and inside
the province surge back home." Furthermore, Jonathan Steele reported
in the Guardian of 30 June 1999, that one ethnic Albanian professional
"disclosed that it
was KLA advice, rather than Serbian deportations, which led some of
the hundreds of thousands of Albanians to leave Kosovo."
Unfortunately,
the Albanian-American brothers "righteous jihad" is one that
further promotes bin Laden's war of terrorism against the American people.
Sadly, they were pawns in that tragic game, victims of the unscrupulous
lies and machinations of men like Congressman Eliot L. Engel of New
York and William Walker, former U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador and former
member of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE),
who knew the facts but twisted and distorted them for their own purposes.
It was William Walker who accompanied the bodies of the Bytyqi brothers
back from Kosovo to New York.
On one
of his first trips to Kosovo, Congressman Engel stood on the square
of Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, and told ethnic Albanians that he
wanted to return as its first U.S. Ambassador to an independent
Kosova, (as opposed to the official Serbian name, Kosovo)
in essence, fomenting anarchy and encouraging revolution against the
legitimate government in Belgrade. Congressman Engel should be especially
pleased to know that of the 40,000 Serbs who once lived in Pristina,
fewer than 250, mostly elderly, are confined in two apartment complexes,
too terrified to even go in search of food. It should also be noted
that the Serbians, who were once the majority in Kosovo, their Jerusalem,
have all but had their culture, society, language and religion eradicated
by ethnic Albanians who gained their majority mostly by crossing illegally
from Albanian into Kosovo, ably assisted by the Kosovo Liberation Army
(KLA), a flawed U.S. foreign policy and a willing media.
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As
a career military officer's wife, Stella Jatras has traveled widely
and has lived in many foreign countries where she not only learned about
other cultures but also became very knowledgeable regarding world affairs
and world politics. Stella Jatras lived in Moscow for two years (where
her husband, George, was the Senior Air Attaché), and while there,
worked in the Political Section of the US Embassy. Stella has also lived
in Germany, Greece and Saudi Arabia. Her travels took her to over twenty
countries.
Previous article
by Stella Jatras on Antiwar.com
The
Case of the Invisible Trial, or, 'Where's the Beef?'
3/7/02
'Voices
of Moral Obtuseness' or 'Voices of Immoral Bigotry'?
9/29/01
The
Media's War Against the Serbs
1/15/01
If
It's Good Enough for Serbia's Goose, Why Not for Croatia's Gander?
12/7/00
Srebrenica"
– Code Word to Silence Critics of US Policy in the Balkans
7/31/00
From
Camp Swampy to Camp Bondsteell
4/6/00
Open Letter
to General Michael Short
11/3/99
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It
was at the request of the KLA that Walker was asked to investigate the
discovery of a number of Albanian bodies in the village of Racak, a
KLA stronghold, after a battle had taken place between KLA and Serb
forces. Before even reaching Racak, and before any evaluation or independent
investigation could be made, Walker immediately pointed his crooked
finger of guilt at the Serbs and declared the killings a "massacre."
Primarily based on the Racak massacre, President Clinton ordered the
bombing of Yugoslavia, a sovereign nation and a people who had not harmed
one hair on the head of a single American. The truth eventually came
out. The Italian newspaper, Il Manifesto headlined: "OSCE
LIED ABOUT RACAK." Rome, April 09, 2000: " There was no
massacre in Racak, says today the Italian daily Il Manifesto, citing
the results of the inquiry recently launched by the German daily Berliner
Zeitung. The evidence clearly shows what really happened: there was
no mass murder in Racak. Those were probably the bodies of the KLA terrorists
who died [in the battle] on January 15th. "
In her often moving article, Ms. Walder left out a few important facts
regarding the KLA for whose cause the Bytyqi brothers died. In 1998,
State Department officials listed the Kosovo Liberation Army as a terrorist
organization. The KLA was labeled as the "Vietcong of the Balkans"
by Mark Almond, Chairman of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group
(BHHRG) in the weekly British Spectator of 3 April 1999. Marcia
Christoff Kurop in The Wall Street Journal on 1 Nov. 2001,
"Al
Qaeda's Balkan Links," reported that "For the past 10
years, the most senior leaders of al Qaeda have visited the Balkans,
including bin Laden himself on three occasions between 1994 and 1996."
It should be noted that this WSJ European report did not appear in the
WSJ national edition for American consumption. Chris Hedges described
the KLA s founders as "diehard Marxist-Leninists as well as descendants
of the fascist militias raised by the Italians in World War II,"
in a New York Times article of 28 March.
THE KLA'S HEROIN CONNECTIONS. HOW MUCH PROOF DO YOU NEED?
Jerry Seper of The Washington Times reported
in 1999 that "some members of the Kosovo Liberation Army which
has financed its war effort through the sale of heroin, were trained
in terrorist camps run by international fugitive Osama bin Laden."
Furthermore, The
Centre for Peace in the Balkans reported Bin Laden's Balkan
Connections and that "Osama bin Laden's activities in Albania are
well known and documented. As a matter of fact at one point the presence
of his network in that country was so powerful that US Defense Secretary
William Cohen canceled a scheduled visit July 1999 for fear of being
assassinated. Bin Laden's organization was one of several fundamentalist
groups that had sent units to fight in Kosovo, the neighboring province
of Serbia."
Christian Jennings of The Daily Telegraph reported on 19 Feb.
2002, "Taliban heroin profits arming Balkan rebels," that
"Heroin from huge stockpiles in Afghanistan is beginning to pour
into European capitals, with much of the profit being used to buy arms
for Albanian rebels seeking to start a new round of conflict in the
southern Balkans. Senior drug trade analysts from the United Nations
Drug Control Program in Vienna and Western police officials say much
of the heroin being sold in countries such as Austria, Germany and Switzerland
is coming from stocks in Afghanistan, much of it controlled by al-Qaeda
and Taliban fighters. European drug squad officers say Albanian and
Kosovo Albanian dealers are ruthlessly trying to seize control of the
European heroin market, worth up to $27 billion a year, and have taken
over the trade in at least six European countries."
Over 80% of drugs going into Europe today originate from Kosovo. The
Christian Science Monitor reported on Oct. 20, 1994: "Disrupted
by the Yugoslav conflict, drug trafficking across the Balkans is making
a comeback as Albanian mafia barons carve out a new smuggling route
to Western Europe, bypassing the peninsula's war zones, according to
United Nations and other narcotics experts." To document the increase
in traffic through the Albanian Kosovar region The Monitor continued,
"For example, just 14 pounds of hard drugs were seized by Hungarian
police in 1990, but by August this year [1994] the figure had risen
to 1,304 pounds."
WHO WILL PAY FOR THE CRIMES OF THE KLA?
In addition to drugs, the Kosovo Liberation
army is engaging in sex slavery, prostitution, (Agence-France Presse
(AFP), 9 August 2001) murders, and kidnappings. Yet, Senator Joseph
Lieberman, another apologist for the KLA says, "The United States
of America and the Kosovo Liberation Army stand for the same human values
and the principles . . . Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human
rights and American values." (Washington Post, Apr. 28,
1999). It makes one wonder what Senator Lieberman considers American
values.
In her New York Times article Joyce Walder also failed to mention
the rapes of Serbian nuns, (New York Post, 19 June 1999), the
murder of priests, or the "granny
killers," the KLA murder of elderly women. (The Washington
Times, 13 Aug. 1999.) Other reports were of murder by drowning the
women in bathtubs or by decapitation. Nor was there mention of the destruction
of over 200 13th and 14th century churches and monasteries
or "The mutilated bodies of 14 Serbian farmers who had been shot,"
as Chris Hedges reported in the New York Times of 25 July 1999.
And the murders and destruction still continue unabated by the international
community. Who will pay for the continuation of Hitler's final solution
to exterminate Serbia's culture, society, language and religion in Kosovo
by his World War II allies?
Former Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia, James Bissett, wrote
in The National Post (Canada), 13 November 2001, "War
on terrorism skipped the KLA," that "Kosovo has become exclusively
an Albanian province with the exception of a few stalwart Serbians in
the Mitrovica area who live surrounded by barbed wire and are threatened
daily with murder and mayhem by their Albanian neighbours. The Balkans,
since the end of the bombing, have been in constant turmoil caused by
the KLA terrorist activities."
Americans have been warned that there are still many Al Qaeda "sleepers"
i.e., "cells" in this country just waiting to commit another
9/11. How many of these sleepers have infiltrated the pro-KLA communities
under the guise of being freedom fighters for "Kosova independence?"
Dare we ask the question? Or is that racial profiling? Well known columnist
and journalist, Bill Gertz of The Washington Times reported on
18 September 2001, "Hijackers connected to Albanian terrorist cell,
CIA says." Gertz further stated, "Islamic radicals, including
supporters of bin Laden, have been supporting Albanian rebels fighting
in the region, including members of the Kosovo Liberation Army."
AFP further
reports on 7 March, "FBI director Robert Mueller today warned
that al-Qaeda cells around the world, including in the United States,
were planning new terror attacks on the United States – despite
seeing their home base in Afghanistan routed....[Attorney General] Ashcroft
warned Americans they probably wouldn't be able to lower their guard
in their lifetimes."
To compare the deaths of three Albanian-American brothers who went to
fight on foreign soil as warriors of Islam along side the Marxist, narco-terrorist
Kosovo Liberation Army to America s "Fighting Sullivan brothers,"
as reported in the Wadler article, is an insult to the memory of those
brave sailors who were fighting for our country. When Mr. Walker joined
Representative Engel at the funeral, he stated that he "was not
certain the brothers were getting the recognition they deserved."
To that I certainly agree, but not in the sense Mr. Walker intended.
So what exactly is going on here? The connection between Osama
bin Laden's KLA and Al Qaeda is indisputable; these are the same terrorists
our nation is fighting against. President Bush's admonition should be
directed to those who support the KLA, in particular of Mr. William
Walker and Congressman Engel: "You're either with us
or against us." Which is it?
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