I have read this article and now that I have stopped laughing, I can now respond. Let me start by saying that I have been in Kosovo for 5 years now and am an American citizen. Mr. Schwartz spent 18 months in the Balkans and knows nothing of the region or culture in the current aspect. He says several times of how the Albanians are such peace loving people and how much they love Americans, that is the biggest farce I have ever read. The Albanians are uneducated, minipulating theives and would sell their own mother for a euro. They destroy their own communities by polluting the rivers and streams and dumping their trash anywhere they wish. You can travel miles along streams and not go more then 1 foot without finding trash or plastic bottles converging in piles along the rocks and creek beds. They burn plastics and tires as though it was wood and pollute the air so devistatingly bad, that there is a constant haze floating around the country almost year round. As far as loving Americans, they love our money and nothing else. I have been overcharged for everything I have purchased in the past five years. They will give Russian and Serbian citizens a much lower price on an item because they feel they are not “rich” like Americans and I have proven this theory numerous times throughout every shopping market in Kosovo.They speak so much of how they love Americans to your face, but as soon as you walk away, they spit on the ground as to get the nice things they just said out of their mouths. As far as Muslim, that is the biggest joke. The Albanians are as much muslim as I am. No one ever attends mosque or prays and when the hoja cries out from the mosque tower, they turn their radios up as to drown out the sound. They only claim to be muslim as one more way to manipulate western countries into feeling sorry for them. Ask any of them of the March 2004 atrocities as where several hundred Serbian churches and homes were burnt to the ground by Albanians and none seem to remember that occurence, but ask about 98-99 and they can tell you of all the horrible things the Serbian army did to “their” people. The Albanians will and have lied about anything as to make them look like poor little helpless people, but don’t be fooled, the UCK, hailed in Kosovo as the Albanian freedom fighters, killed more Albanian people then the actual Serbian army did. Anyone the UCK thought to be collaberators or friends of Serbia or even just people they didn’t like, where killed and buried in shallow graves to say that the Serbians did this. Fatmir Ahmeti, an ex-UCK member has written a book about the UCK murders, but for some crazy reason, noone wishes to publish it with all of the western world backing the so called poor Albanians. One Albanian man even told to me, ” I have six sons and my Serbian neighbor has two, I will gladly sacrifice two of my sons to kill his just so they do not breed more Serbs. That is how you win a war, you out populate the enemy and take over.” That is the peaceful mentality of the Albanians in Kosovo. So Mr. Schwartz, spend more time actually on the ground doing more research, then just travelling around for a year and half and feel you know all of the story. Maybe in my next response I will talk about the drug problem and human trafficking that is going on in Kosovo. If you feel that in just 5 years of records that, 1,500 kilos of heroine, 11,000 kilos of cocaine and 15,000 kilos of Marijuana is a petty amount, then I say to you, denial is not only a river in egypt.
