N.A.T.O. IN KOSOVO: IN BED WITH A SCORPION

The KLA is running drugs and refuelling conflict. No wonder even innocent
tourists can get arrested

The arrest of two Canadians and two Britons in Montenegro last week has
caused the ire of the West to be directed, once again, against Serb leader
Slobodan Milosevic. But, as Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy decries
his "thug" tactics, it is well to remember that there is a dark side to
NATO's ally in Kosovo as well. And peacekeeping forces could soon be faced
with enemies on two fronts if they hope to maintain order in the Balkans.

As early as March of 1999, The Times of London reported links between the
KLA and narcotics trafficking. In the same month, the ITAR-Tass news agency
reported that the chief of the Russian Armed Forces, General Anatoly
Kvashnin, had sent a letter to the Supreme Commander of NATO forces in
Europe, General Wesley Clark and to the chairman of the NATO Military
Committee, Klaus Naumann, detailing the involvement of "Kosovo terrorists"
in the narcotics trade in Europe. The letter outlined the "where, what, how,
and why" of the KLA drug business. By ignoring these warnings, NATO had
created a formula for failure in Kosovo.

NATO planners chose to ignore this information in their haste to win their
"just war." A year after NATO intervention in Kosovo, the Alliance has
failed to meet its key objective of keeping the peace. Kosovo has degraded
to the point where crime, illegal weapons and drug trafficking are rampant.

Ironically, KFOR (Kosovo Force) troops are now forced to defend themselves
against violent armed aggression from ethnic Albanians. NATO troops were
never intended to police a hostile population and, least of all, deal with
international drug and arms smuggling. As Army Brigadier-General John
Craddock noted in late June of 1999, after U.S. troops had for the first
time been forced to fire on hostile ethnic Albanians, "We have become the
targets of violent acts." Not exactly the role NATO envisioned.

In an effort to end the threat of KLA attacks against NATO forces, in June
of this year, U.S. troops led a series of raids against ethnic-Albanian
strongholds to seize arms caches. A senior Pentagon official had reported
that the situation in Kosovo was deteriorating rapidly, and that U.S. troops
could be forced into armed conflict with the Albanian guerrillas. Clearly,
if NATO cannot control the KLA and its drug trade there will be no peace to
keep in Kosovo.

The KLA has bloomed in the NATO/UN sponsored power vacuum due to an
ineffective, or nonexistent, plan for the development of a governmental
structure in Kosovo. This resurgence has allowed key KLA leaders to become
power brokers in the region. Hashim Thaci, the leader of the KLA's political
wing, has become the key contact point for NATO, the UN and the Organization
for Security and Co-operation in Europe, making him the most important
ethnic-Albanian politician in Kosovo. In turn, the former commander of the
KLA's military wing, Agim Ceku, commands the new Kosovo Protection Corps,
which is mainly comprised of former KLA fighters. Financing for these
activities comes from heroin trafficking.

The KLA is heavily involved in the illicit Balkan drug trade, better known
as the Balkan Route. Balkan drug organizations helped the KLA funnel arms
and cash into Kosovo for the continuing guerrilla war against Belgrade. With
the tacit support of the KLA and its leadership, Kosovo has become the
primary conduit for heroin trafficking from Afghanistan via Turkey and the
Balkans into Western Europe. Clearly, those organized-crime elements who
helped the KLA now want to cash in on their previous good will.

European police organizations estimate that, every month, two to six tonnes
of heroin, worth twelve times its weight in gold, moves through Turkey
toward Eastern Europe. This route originates in the Taliban-run opium fields
of Afghanistan and is worth an estimated $400-billion (U.S.) a year.
Kosovars (ethnic Albanians from Kosovo) now dominate the Balkan Route which
supplies 80 per cent of Europe's heroin. Interpol figures indicate that
Albanian speakers represent approximately 1 per cent of Europe's population,
yet in 1997 they made up 14 per cent of all Europeans arrested for heroin
smuggling, and on average they carried substantially larger quantities of
the drug.

Besides cash, the Balkan Route also acts as conduit for illegal arms to the
KLA. Arms are either smuggled in directly or money earned from the illicit
drug trade is used to purchase weapons in Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Cyprus,
Italy, Montenegro, Switzerland and Turkey. NATO has reported that weapons
smuggled into Kosovo included: anti-aircraft missiles, assault rifles,
sniper rifles, shotguns, grenade launchers, mortars, ammunition,
antipersonnel mines and infrared night-vision gear.

In fact, regardless of their guilt or innocence on terrorism charges, the
detained Canadians likely ran afoul of increased Serbian border surveillance
aimed at deterring these activities.

The greatest irony of this situation is that the U.S. government has been
well aware of the Balkan Route and the KLA connection for some years. The
U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency reported in 1998 that ethnic-Albanian
organizations in Kosovo are "second only to Turkish gangs as the predominant
heroin smugglers along the Balkan route." NATO and the United States ignored
this for the political expediency of the war in Kosovo.

Kosovo never represented a traditional UN peacekeeping scenario for NATO.
The role was more peace enforcement. Yet NATO personnel are simply not
equipped and trained to handle the policing of the drug trade that is
fuelling the violence in Kosovo.

The presence of NATO forces has created a clear social divide between Serb
and Kosovar, which has exacerbated the ethnic violence. The ethnic violence
is also escalating as the KLA moves for independence, as indicated by its
rearmament. Rearmament has been made possible due to the ethnic-Albanian
control of the Balkan Route. KFOR has become caught in a snare where it is
being forced to fight all sides in the conflict; thus its role as peace
enforcer has been lost and it has merely become another combatant in Kosovo.

So NATO is left with only one realistic option -- it must militarily face
down the KLA to stop the rearmament process and in turn shut down the drug
trafficking that is not just affecting Kosovo, but all of Europe. NATO, the
saviour, may be forced to become the oppressor in Kosovo.