It is hypocritical for the US to be waging war against Islamic terrorism given the US record in the Balkans: the US supported Islamists in Bosnia and Kosovo against the Christian Serbs.
One would think that, after their experience in Afghanistan, the Americans in particular and NATO in general would have realized that supporting Islamic extremists for the purpose of achieving short-term strategic goals is an approach that is sure to blow up in their face (often quite literally). Nevertheless, following the breakup of Yugoslavia and the subsequent civil war, the US and NATO hurried to condemn the way Serbia was treating Albanian separatists in its province of Kosovo; Albanian separatists who were led by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
The KLA, classified by both the government of Serbia and by the CIA as an illegal terrorist organization, is very much Islamist and extremist in nature. Following the Mujahedeen example, KLA fighters engaged the government of Serbia in a lengthy guerilla war in the late 1990’s. As Chris Marsden explains, the KLA “had pursued a strategy of destabilising the Serbian province of Kosovo by acts of terrorism, in the hope that the US and NATO would intervene. They ambushed Serb patrols and killed policemen.” The US and NATO did intervene, providing finances, weaponry, and finally direct military aid by bombing Serbia for 78 days in 1999. As a result, Serb forces withdrew from Kosovo, and NATO moved in. As of January 2008, NATO maintains its presence in Kosovo while the US and other Western states are advocating that Kosovo ought to become an independent Albanian Muslim state ruled by the KLA. This would allow NATO to maintain its bases in Kosovo permanently. Unless, of course, the Albanian Islamists turn on them like the Afghan Islamists did.
Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda has also had a presence in Kosovo; a Washington Times article reported that al-Qaeda “both trained and financially supported” the KLA. The Times of London quoted Fatos Klosi, the head of the Albanian intelligence service, as saying that bin Laden had used humanitarian agencies as fronts to fund terrorism in the region as far back as 1994, and that “terrorists had already infiltrated other parts of Europe from bases in Albania. Interpol believes more than 100,000 blank Albanian passports were stolen in riots last year, providing ample opportunity for terrorists to acquire false papers.” Like with the opium industry in 1980’s Afghanistan, organized crime, prostitution, and drug and human trafficking rings have ballooned in Kosovo during the KLA insurgency. As in Afghanistan, the many criminal operations in Kosovo are funding Islamic terrorism. The KLA remains firmly in control of Kosovo, its members have achieved major victories in recent elections, and crime and extremism continue to be rampant in the breakaway province.
Even as conflict in the original Afghanistan appears to have no end in sight, the US and NATO seem to be pursuing in Kosovo the same strategy that created the Afghan mess. The Americans do not seem to realize that Islamic extremists are not the grateful type, and that short-term strategic goals are not worth creating another “Islamic Emirate” and another regime that harbors terrorists. The ends do not justify the means!
Similar to the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Albanians in Kosovo are destroying Christian churches, desecrating Christian cultural sites and graveyards, and terrorizing the Serbian and other non-Albanian minorities in Kosovo. Their goal of creating a purely Islamic state led by war-hardened extremist militants seems close at hand. The only thing missing, for now, is a Religious Police.
It should come as no surprise if within a few years we witness NATO invading its Albanian Islamist “allies” in Kosovo and fighting a prolonged guerilla war against them as well. The 2007 Fort Dix Terrorist Plot, planned by 6 jihadi terrorists including 4 Kosovar Albanians (1 of them being a KLA-trained sharp shooter), seems to be a prelude to what can be expected when the Albanian Islamists see no further use in cooperating with the US and NATO. The shortsightedness of American foreign policy in Afghanistan is being repeated in Kosovo, the lessons have not been learned, and the world is left to anticipate the consequences of an “Islamic Emirate” in Europe.
