Who is the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army? German document reveals secret CIA role

The forces generating and sustaining the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army have remained mostly hidden. What's really behind the KLA has become more important now that President Bill Clinton has started a war against Yugoslavia. Many reports in the past have mentioned the covert forces involved with the KLA. For example, on July 15, 1998, PBS Newshour reported that U.S. Vietnam War veterans were training KLA mercenaries in Albania. Funding for the KLA has been shadowy, much of it funneled through drug sales. Almost every European newspaper has reported on the known ties between the KLA and the sales of illegal drugs in Europe. Only the U.S. media have ignored this story. The European media, however, don't mention the history of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's use of illegal drug sales to funnel money to various covert operations. This record--from secret operations in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War to financing the contra war against Nicaragua-has been documented.

Recent media reports tie several imperialist military and spy agencies to the KLA. This is significant since both U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen and the top U.S. general, Henry Shelton, have said in the last week that the goal of the U.S. military operation against Yugoslavia is a victory for the KLA. On April 19, Canadian Member of Parliament David Price told reporters that 50 Canadian soldiers are working with the KLA in Kosovo to help report "where the bombs are falling" so they can better target "where the next bomb should go," UPI reported. Opposition to Canada's participation in the U.S. war on Yugoslavia is growing rapidly in that country. Jane's Defense Weekly reported April 20: "Special forces involvement confirmed." The report said that that special units from Britain, the United States, France "and other NATO groups'' were working undercover in Kosovo. The April 18 London Sunday Telegraph reported that SAS, a unit of the British special forces, is running two KLA training camps near Tirana, the Albanian capital. According to the Telegraph, the KLA units trained by SAS are infiltrating Kosovo, using satellite and cellular telephones to help guide NATO bombing missions. The same report said that the KLA also has contact with the Virginia-based MPRI, which is apparently expanding its role. MPRI is a shadowy operation--the Telegraph called it a professional mercenary organization--which was set up by top U.S. military officers. MPRI was contracted by the Pentagon to organize and train the Croatian Army, which is acknowledged to have carried out the most vicious campaign in the Balkans since the Nazi invasion in the 1940s- the August 1995 offensive against Serbian farmers in the Krajina region.

A report in the July 28,1997, Nation magazine detailed the role played by MPRI and the Pentagon in this criminal campaign, which left hundreds of thousands of Serbs homeless. Finally, this March 21, the New York Times carried a front-page story about a report by the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague that characterized this attack as probably the most brutal event in the Balkans in the last decade. The report was then quickly buried. The Croatian government recently confirmed that several of its generals have "taken leave" to go work with the KLA. A more revealing report was released April 8 by Jurgen Reents, press spokes person for the Party of Democratic Socialism in Germany. The PDS received almost as many votes as the Green Party, which is part of Germany's ruling coalition. The PDS has actively opposed the NATO war on Yugoslavia. Reents said the report came from someone who holds a "strictly confidential and high position in the offices of the German government." The report came through a Catholic priest who has kept the individual's identity secret but has verified the person's authenticity. The report asserts that top NATO, U.S., British and German officials are "utterly lying in public concerning almost all the facts in regard to the Balkan War." It says there are no pictures of any mass killings or of troops force-marching the people of Kosovo out of their homes. There are no such pictures because this is not happening. NATO has desperately attempted to create such pictures but has been unable to, the report asserts. The report says that NATO has let it be known in the refugee camps in Albania and Macedonia that anyone who can produce a videotape or still photographs of any kind - including staged photos--showing these things will be paid $200,000 in U.S. currency. Still, no pictures have appeared. The report says that the German government knows NATO consciously created the refugee crisis. For example, the report says, NATO has targeted and destroyed nearly every fresh-water facility in Kosovo. It also asserts that there are KLA units in Kosovo - one is entirely U.S. mercenaries, the other German mercenaries--who report to the military commands of those countries. Perhaps most revealing is the report's description of a CIA covert operation cynically named "Operation Roots." It is aimed at sowing ethnic divisions in Yugoslavia to encourage its breakup. The report says that this operation has been going on "since the beginning of Clinton's presidency." It is a joint operation with the German secret service, which has also sought to destabilize Yugoslavia. The final objective of "Roots," according to this report, "is the separation of Kosovo, with the aim of it becoming part of Albania; the separation of Montenegro, as the last means of access to the Mediterranean; and the separation of the Vojvodina, which produces most of the food for Yugoslavia. This would lead to the total collapse of Yugoslavia as a viable independent state." The report asserts that the KLA was founded by the CIA. And the funding was funneled through drug-smuggling operations in Europe. When it appeared that an agreement for Kosovo autonomy was about to be reached between Slobodan Milosevic and Ibrahim Rugova in 1998, the CIA stepped up KLA attacks on Yugoslav police units. The Yugoslav police attempts to curtail the KLA were used as the pretext for NATO's attacks. The authenticity of this report cannot be independently verified at this time. But much of it is consistent with what is already known. It helps to expose the real forces behind the war on Yugoslavia and shows who are the true aggressors.

By Gary Wilson May 1999