Is there a CIA war in Kosovo?

By Gary Wilson, Workers World, 18 June 1998

News reports here about the Yugoslav province of Kosovo have presented greatly exaggerated tales. The stories have been “enhanced” by those with an interest in either promoting a civil war or weakening the Yugoslav government.

The Western big-business-controlled media all report the same thing. They say Yugoslav government forces are engaged in “ethnic cleansing” in Kosovo, forcing a flood of refugees from Kosovo to Albania.

The Yugoslav government says its military operations against armed mercenaries entering over the Albanian border ended June 1. It also says there has been no significant exodus from Kosovo to Albania.

So what is the truth of the situation? First, it should never be forgotten that the big media like the New York Times and CNN have close ties to the U.S. State Department, the CIA, the Pentagon and other U.S. government agencies.

These media giants usually serve as propaganda arms for U.S. foreign policy. They can lie about events and frequently do.

Sometimes they admit much later that their original reports weren’t exactly true.

KLA IS MERCENARY ARMY

For example, most reports don’t make it clear that the so- called Kosovo Liberation Army is a foreign mercenary army in the pay of the Western imperialist powers.

The KLA did not exist until recently. It became active only in the last few months.

The June 6 New York Times reported that KLA forces are entering Kosovo through Albania. But they are not from Albania. According to the report, most of them come from Germany—where they were born—and most speak only German, not Albanian. The report claims that many of them, but not all, have parents or grandparents who emigrated from Albania.

All the funds for the mercenary army come from abroad, primarily from the United States, reported the May 26 Washington Post. The money is funneled through Albanian immigrant groups. These are the sort of anti-communist groups long promoted by the CIA.

Since March, the Post reported, the U.S. group has sent $4 million to the KLA. These are the openly reported funds. There is more “cash carried in suitcases” that hasn’t been disclosed, the Post said.

The article said the U.S. State Department has encouraged the transfer of funds to the KLA. It is all legal, State Department spokesperson John Russell said, because the KLA has not been classified by the U.S. government as “terrorist.”

This is in contrast to every genuine national liberation movement in the world. The U.S. government routinely labels them all as terrorists. For example, groups like the Palestine Liberation Organization have been labeled as terrorist. Anyone in the U.S. sending funds to the PLO would risk arrest and prison.

The KLA has no known leaders, political platform, publications or anything else to indicate that it is a liberation force.

In fact, the tactics used by the KLA are more akin to those used by fascist terror squads. In its long report of May 26, the Washington Post buried a paragraph describing how KLA mercenaries have targeted Serbs. One out of every 10 people in Kosovo is Serbian.

The paragraph described KLA mercenaries stopping a train. They proceed to search the train, and then abduct a man traveling with his family because he is a Serb.

“About a dozen Serbs have been kidnapped in the past week. Two have been found dead,” the Post reports.

The mercenaries don’t just kill Serbs. They also kill Albanians considered to be friendly to Serbs.

As for the press reports of a mass exodus from Kosovo, none shows pictures of masses of people. A photo of a family of eight walking through a field, for example, accompanied the New York Times report. The caption said “thousands of refugees are fleeing.”

In the meantime, the United States is waging a two-pronged war against Yugoslavia.

Since 1991, Washington has imposed sanctions on Yugoslavia. Sanctions are like an army surrounding your house. They may not be firing weapons at the house, but they are stopping all kinds of supplies and food from entering. It is a policy of starvation once favored during sieges by medieval armies.

These sanctions continue to this day. Now the United States is proposing to stiffen them.

WILL U.S. TROOPS BE NEXT?

U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke said in London June 7: “The sanctions regime of the Contact Group led by the U.S. and Great Britain has been very tight and is poised to tighten further if the situation deteriorates, and NATO is already making contingency plans if everything falls apart.” (French News Agency, June 7)

The contingency plan Holbrooke referred to is the threat of military occupation by U.S./NATO forces. U.S. Senate leader Trent Lott supported a U.S. military operation in Kosovo on CNN's “Late Edition” June 7.

According to news reports, the U.S. State Department recently confirmed that U.S. policy has not changed since December 1992. That is when President George Bush declared that the United States would intervene militarily in Kosovo if it decided that it was “necessary.”

The French News Agency reported on June 6 that the United States and Britain have put into place everything needed to assert authority for sending a military force into Kosovo.