Meeting the Burden of Statehood: Is Kosovo
Ready?
By Gregory
R. Copley
A speech to
Reconsidering
Kosovo, held
in Washington,
DC, September
28, 2006, under
the auspices of
the American
Council for
Kosovo.
The
international community is being asked
whether it should consider recognizing the
sovereignty of the Serbian province of
Kosovo. But first it is necessary to ask
whether Kosovo meets the criteria for
sovereignty. Unless it does, the new
so-called state would be an artificial
entity subsisting on aid from the world
community. And � as with all dependent
societies � it will merely continue to
nurture frustrations and resentment of its
benefactors, causing a growing source of
criminal and terrorist behavior damaging to
its region and to the world.
Some of the major points I
make in this regard are that:
1.
Kosovo does not meet any historical
standards for sovereignty. The territory of
Kosovo was seized for the present
majority of the area only by external
powers, and cannot even be defended in the
normal sense by the proposed new state
itself. Moreover, it is not economically
viable except through criminal activities,
and has been created solely as a dependent
of the international community.
2.
For Kosovo to be recognized as a legitimate
sovereign state, the international community
must violate the sovereignty of another
recognized state, the Republic of Serbia,
bypassing a variety of treaties and
understandings, such as the UN Charter and
the Helsinki Accords.
3.
Kosovo is already a territory run as a
criminal enterprise, with links into
jihadist movements. As a result of this
and other factors, Kosovo is not run along
lines which have historically been proven to
be viable from the standpoint of national
management.
There is nothing mystical or
pre-ordained about statehood and
sovereignty. To be valid and lasting,
statehood and sovereignty are conditions
which are earned and defended, not dispensed
by other, more powerful societies. Even
Yasir Arafat said that any state given to
the Palestinians by their enemies was a
state not worth having.
In my new book, The Art of
Victory: Strategies for Personal Success and
Global Survival in a Changing World,1
I deal specifically with how societies form
and prosper. I noted: �Few people today are
familiar with many of the countries which
existed only, say, 300 years ago. ... Italy
did not then exist as a sovereign state; nor
did the United States. And more countries
will appear or disappear in the next few
decades. The wars of secession, and the
re-shaping of boundaries � largely
suppressed by the Cold War � begin anew. The
wars to break up Yugoslavia are still
unfinalized. And in many of the new wars we
will see savagery abound as groups
�re-discover� old identities, and seek to
capitalize on the permissive climate of
change and chaos.�
In the book I go on to say
that in many respects, the �al-Qaida�
phenomenon owes its success to the financial
links with what we are calling the Albanian
mafia, just as the Albanian criminals owe
their success to the logistics and networks
of al-Qaida. The chaos of changing
borders � such as we are seeing today in the
Balkans, and elsewhere � is fertile ground
for criminality. In the coming decades there
will be more and more �no go� areas in the
world. In many respects, the terror has just
begun. Criminal states, such as the proposed
Kosovo Albanian �state�, will profoundly
change the sense of security of all peoples
around the world. Already Kosovo is becoming
like Afghanistan under the Taliban.
And like the Taliban destruction of
the ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan, the Albanian
Islamist process of destruction of the
Christian Churches will be complete if
Kosovo is granted independence, and Western
civilization will be gone from a large part
of the Balkans. In its place will be a
criminal-terrorist state, leaching into the
heart of Europe. And it was made feasible by
the short-term policies of many European and
US politicians of the 1990s.
We are now at a watershed.
The World community does not have to
continue with the errors of the 1990s. It
does not have to willingly accept �
and pay the price in economic and security
terms � that Kosovo should be granted the
status of a sovereign state. Kosovo does not
meet any of the criteria for a modern
nation-state, either in terms of the
structure developed since the Treaty of
Westphalia in 1648, or of the
post-Westphalian structure now emerging.
Because of globalization and the free
movement of people, ideas, and capital, 21st
Century statehood will demand, at least,
certain conditions of economic and
structural sustainability and
multi-confessional and multi-cultural
composition. Attempts to define sovereignty
in terms of the antique tribalism of
mono-ethnicity and single belief societies
flies in the face of the realities now
emerging with a globalized society.
Kosovo and Narco-Trafficking
Kosovo is now the principal
center of narco-trafficking for all of
Europe, and this has enabled the Albanian
mafia to displace other criminal enterprises
throughout most of Western Europe, and to
expand criminal activities into other,
non-narcotic areas. Two points in this
regard are important: firstly, the Albanian
mafia is essentially what we can loosely
call the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA),
although it now goes by various names; and
secondly, the KLA exists, and is able to
access much of its narcotic product, because
of its close interrelationship with
jihadist movements and foreign state
sponsors.
See
Defense & Foreign Affairs Special
Analysis, October 25, 2005:
Heroin Production Facilities Flourish in
Kosovo Area Under US Military Protection.
As an example, three major
heroin production laboratories, run by the
KLA, are operating within the area of Kosovo
which has been under the control of US Army
units operating from Camp Bondsteel.
Ironically, to support the KLA which the
former US Clinton Administration had deemed
an ally, some US authorities operating in
the area specifically protected the
laboratories from inspection by other NATO
forces in the area. There is also evidence
that, over a period of years, US military
and possibly intelligence elements have
actively engaged in relations with, and
protection of, the narco-traffickers.
Since the withdrawal of
Serbian control over its Kosovo province,
there has been an increasing amount of opium
grown in the area, and this is a major
supply source for the heroin laboratories,
although some raw opium may also be fed into
the laboratories from, or via, Turkey
(possibly including some raw opium from
Afghanistan and Iraqi Kurdistan).
The determination of the KLA
to defend these facilities is now well-known
locally. A Russian unit, some four years
ago, engaged the KLA in a firefight in the
area, at night, after which the KLA forces
were sufficiently strong and well-armed that
they surrounded the Russian camp and
essentially prevented the Russian forces
from leaving their camp.
The KLA�s use of Kosovo as a
criminal clearing-house extends to a wide
range of other activities. Stolen cars from
all around Europe, but particularly from
Italy, are �re-processed� in Kosovo, and
given new papers, before being re-exported
to places such as Albania. One such car was
used for some time by the Albanian Interior
Minister, until a few years ago, before, on
a visit to Greece, it was identified because
of an Interpol alert, and seized by Greek
authorities and taken from the Albanian
Interior Minister. As well, electrical goods
and household fittings removed from the
homes of Kosovo Serbs, who have been driven
from the area, are on sale through a major
network of retail outlets in Albania.
Little of this gains
international attention, although the use of
roadblocks by the KLA reached such a level
that the United Nations and NATO leaderships
in Kosovo have issued warnings to their
personnel.
See Defense & Foreign
Affairs Special Analysis, October
20, 2005: KFOR
Claims �Criminals� Active in
Western Kosovo; Linked to
KLA and Narco-Trafficking.
US involvement with the narco-trafficking
has gone beyond merely turning a blind eye
to the activities of the KLA in the area. US
military vehicles, several years ago, were
known to have actually transported narcotics
from Kosovo, into Western Europe.
Kosovo and Jihadist Links
Our organization, the
International Strategic Studies Association
(ISSA), has for some years identified the
growing links which the KLA has with the
jihadist movements which are largely
identified under the rubric of al-Qaida.
It is important to note, however, that
labels such as �al-Qaida� are
misleading. These KLA-jihadist links
have been well-documented.2
Moreover, the KLA, and the territory of
Kosovo, forms the basis of the territorial
link for jihadists moving into and
out of Europe, seamlessly interacting with
jihadists in Bosnia, and in the
southern Serbian area of Ra�ka, as well as
in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
(FYROM), and the newly-independent state of
Montenegro, and so on.
Significantly, as we know
from a wide range of information, Europe is
a major target for the global jihadist
movements, and not only those under the
al-Qaida label, but also those financed
and logistically made viable by the Iranian
Government.
We know that a number of
foreign governments support, either directly
or indirectly, jihadist activities
which are based in Kosovo and Bosnia. These
state sponsors include the Turkish and
Iranian governments, and both governments do
so for nationalist reasons or, often,
because of corruption, rather than for
ideological or religious beliefs. Indeed,
even secular officials in Turkey who are
concerned over the rise of Islamism in their
own country support the KLA, for example,
because of historic links into the Balkan
territories and communities which once
formed an integral part of the old Ottoman
Empire and which still are seen as being
within the orbit of pan-Turkism. In this
regard, although it is not the topic of this
presentation, we see a major spread of
jihadist, criminal, and intelligence
activities into FYROM, Montenegro, and these
activities are often dependent on the
support of the Albanian Government. The
People�s Republic of China (PRC) is actively
engaged in the area, as well, using its old
Cold War contacts in Albania.
Illicit Weapons Trafficking
It is axiomatic that narco-trafficking
and terrorism are interdependent with the
illegal traffic in weapons. We have strong
evidence, which is touched upon in
Appendix (iii), that the entity which we
are, for the sake of expediency calling the
KLA, is heavily engaged in arms trafficking
not only to support its criminal and
jihadist-linked activities, but also as
a profit-center in its own right.
It is significant that
international financial controls have meant
that the terrorist-criminal movements have
been forced to adopt new means of handling
and funding their activities, and in
organizing their command and control. We�re
seeing the use of bartering, or commodities
and services exchanges, replacing wire
transfers of funds in the financing of
acquisition of weapons and explosives
throughout Europe, for example. The KLA has
been able to operate an illegal weapons
exchange with impunity, having the �safe
haven� of Kosovo, protected by the
international community.
The man who has been at the
center of this activity has been a
second-ranking KLA leader, Niam Behzloulzi,
also known as �Houlzi�. That may not be his
real name, but we know he carries (or has
until recently carried) ID under the name of
Niam Behzloulzi.3
In Conclusion:
There is ample evidence that
Kosovo has no legitimacy in the normal sense
of a sovereign state, and that, if it was to
be recognized as such, it would further
erode the credibility of the international
system. Indeed, the United Nations is a body
based on the membership of sovereign states,
fewer and fewer of which can actually meet
the criteria for real sovereignty. The Cold
War bi-polar system sustained, for 50 years,
many non-viable, so-called �states� within
the ambit of the superpowers, but that world
is gone, and now we are increasingly seeing
�failed states� for what they are.
Kosovo would emerge as a
�state� at a time when it can no longer
expect the long-term protection of the
global system. This will only force it to
turn increasingly to the criminal-terrorist
enterprises which have been the hallmark of
its birth.
Footnotes:
1.
Copley, Gregory: The Art of Victory:
Strategies for Personal Success and
Global Survival in a Changing World.
New York, 2006: Simon & Schuster�s
Threshold Editions. ISBN-13:
978-1-4165-2470-0, or ISBN-10:
1-4165-2470-3.
2. Defense &
Foreign Affairs Special Analysis,
October 25, 2005: Jihadist Terrorist
Leader Returns to the Balkans as Actions
Intensify to Promote Kosovo Independence,
and Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily,
March 19, 2004: New Kosovo Violence
is Start of Predicted 2004 Wave of
Islamist Operations: the Strategic
Ramifications, and Defense &
Foreign Affairs Special Analysis,
November 12, 2005: The Origins and
Developments of Modern Islamist
Organizations in the Balkans; Links Into
Narco-Trafficking.
3. Defense &
Foreign Affairs Special Analysis,
October 25, 2005: New Evidence
Highlights Albanian Link to Explosives
Used in London, Madrid Bombings.
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