* Anziana partigiana serba difende la sua casa (AP)
* Il mercato dei narcotici in Svizzera e' controllato dall'UCK (AP)
* Boom delle droghe leggere in Kosmet (Blic)
* Dal "Kosova" liberato si puo' finalmente esportare droga ovunque
(The Guardian)
* HEROIN HEROES (Mother Jones Magazine)
---
Una donna serba difende la sua casa
Di DANIKA KIRKA, Associated Press 23/3/2000
KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Jugoslavia (AP) -- A chiunque possa pensare di
poterla costringere ad uscire dalla sua casa, Jelisaveta Raganovic manda
un messaggio: Prima dovrete passare sul mio corpo!
Potrebbe non sembrare una gran minaccia venendo da una donna di 80 anni,
l'ultima serba che si ritiene sia ormai da sola nella zona di etnia
albanese della citta' divisa di Kosovska Mitrovica.
Ma comunque, la Sig.ra Raganovic ha un piano. Ogni notte, questa
veterana della guerriglia comunista di Josip Broz Tito, durante la II
Guerra Mondiale, prende la sua posizione di sentinella fuori dalla sua
casa. Stando seduta in una poltrona vicino ad una scatola di pietre,
aspetta tutta la notte, pronta a colpire qualsiasi invasore che salga le
sue scale.
"Lo so che sto per morire", ha detto durante un'intervista mercoledi'.
"Ma moriro' da uomo. Non voglio morire da codarda".
Il problema della Raganovic mostra proprio a quanta pressione
debbano essere sottoposti i serbi che vivono in Kosovo, specialmente
in un luogo come la pietrosa citta' industriale di Kosovska Mitrovica,
dove gli scontri fra le etnie albanesi e serbe sull'altra sponda del
fiume Ibar esplodono con regolarita'.
La zona sud in effetti e' tranquilla, in parte perche' la popolazione
e' praticamente omogenea. L'agenzia ONU per i rifugiati stima che non
piu' di 19 serbi vivano qui ora. Tutti, tranne la Raganovic, vivono in
una chiesa sotto protezione NATO.
Anche alla Raganovic fu data la possibilita' di partire per andare in
posto piu' sicuro, che le avrebbe permesso una vita piu' normale. Tutta
la sua famiglia l'ha ripetutamente pregata di andare a vivere con loro
in Vojvodina, una provincia nel nord della Serbia.
Lei ha rifiutato, scegliendo invece di confidare nei soldati francesi
che facevano la guardia alla sua casa.
Per lei loro sono piu' che peacekeeper, essi sono compagni, uomini con
cui sente di poter trattare da soldato a soldato. I soldati le portano
la carne e le pentole con la marmellata. La portano a far la spesa, le
fanno compagnia.
Il Maggiore Nicolas Naubin (portavoce francese) ha detto che i
peacekeepers capiscono che la sua situazione e' precaria e pertanto
hanno fatto uno sforzo speciale per prendersi cura di lei.
Dovranno lavorare piu' duramente. Sino ad ora la Nato ha fallito nella
creazione di un ambiente sicuro in Kosovo, in particolare per i serbi
che stanno abbandonando la regione a causa degli attacchi per vendetta
degli albanesi.
Migliaia di albanesi morirono durante gli scontri tra Milosevic e le
milizie che combattevano per l'indipendenza del Kosovo. Poi vi e' la
oppressione di 10 anni sotto il regime di Milosevic per la quale molti
vogliono una sorta di risarcimento.
In un posto come Kosovska Mitrovica, 25 miglia a nord della capitale
della provincia, Pristina, i pericoli sono molti. Appena attraversato il
fiume, sulla riva nord rimane uno degli ultimi gruppi di serbi del
Kosovo, un fatto che ha reso tutta la citta' instabile.
I serbi nella zona sbagliata della suddivisione sarebbero obbiettivi
molto facili per la vendetta. Recentemente un'altro serbo dalla parte
albanese, sotto stretto controllo NATO, e' stato ucciso con una scure.
La Raganovic comprende questa situazione ed ha affrontato la sua razione
di violenza. Alcuni hanno invaso la sua casa saccheggiandola.
Hanno preso i suoi libri di storia, la sua biancheria, i suoi piatti.
La sua linea telefonica non funziona - anche se sembra che lei sia
l'unica inquilina del suo palazzo con un tale problema.
Cosi' grande e' il pericolo che deve affrontare, che le organizzazioni
che si occupano dei diritti umani conoscendola non permettono che
la si fotografi o che si fotografi la sua casa. Permettono interviste
a condizione che la posizione della sua casa non sia rivelata.
Anche cosi', la Sig.ra Raganovic non mostra di essere nervosa, saluta
chi la viene a trovare con un abbraccio ed un bacio. Offre del caffe'
generosamente ed insiste a regalare dei dolci da portar via.
E' lei a dare consigli su come stare sicuri, ricordando le parole di un
vecchio comandante dei partigiani, i guerriglieri che combatterono il
nazismo.
Dice: "Noi eravamo abituati a mantenere le posizioni nella neve.
(Il mio comandante) mi diceva: 'Se ti addormenti, sei morta'.
Io non ho mai dimenticato quella lezione."
http://www.newsday.com/ap/international/ap640.htm
> March 23, 2000
>
> Serb Woman Defends Her Home
> By DANICA KIRKA / Associated Press Writer
>
> KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Yugoslavia (AP) -- To anyone who
> might think of driving her from her home, Jelisaveta
> Roganovic has a message: You' ll have to get past me
> first.
>
> It might not seem like much of a threat coming from
> a
> woman who is 80 years old, the last Serb believed to
> be living alone on the ethnic Albanian side of the
> divided city of Kosovska Mitrovica.
>
> But then again, Roganovic has a plan.
>
> Every night, this veteran of Josip Broz Tito' s
> World
> War II communist guerrilla army takes up her
> position
> as a sentinel outside her home. Sitting in a lawn
> chair beside a box of rocks, she waits all night
> long,
> ready to pelt any intruder coming up her stairs.
>
> " I know I' m going to die, " she said during an
> interview Wednesday. " But I' m going to die like a
> man. I don' t want to die like a coward."
>
> Roganovic' s dilemma shows just how much pressure
> Serbs living in Kosovo face right now, especially in
> a
> place like the gritty industrial city of Kosovska
> Mitrovica, where riots between ethnic Albanians and
> Serbs on the other side of the Ibar River break out
> with some regularity.
>
> On the south side though, things are usually quiet
> --
> in part because the population is almost completely
> homogenous. The U.N. refugee agency estimates that
> no
> more than 19 Serbs live here now. All but Roganovic
> live together under NATO protection at a church.
>
> Roganovic was given a chance to leave, too, to go to
> a
> place that was safer and would allow her a more
> normal
> life. Her family has been begging her to come live
> with them in Vojvodina, a province in northern
> Serbia.
>
>
> She refuses, choosing instead to trust the French
> soldiers who guard her home. To her they are more
> than
> peacekeepers, they are comrades, men she feels she
> can
> deal with, soldier to soldier. They bring her tins
> of
> meat and pots of jam. They take her shopping. They
> keep her company.
>
> The peacekeepers, though, realize that her situation
> is precarious and have made a special effort to take
> care of her, said French Maj. Nicolas Naubin, a
> spokesman for French troops.
>
> They are going to have to work harder.
>
> NATO has failed so far to create an overall
> environment of security in Kosovo, particularly for
> Serbs, who have been fleeing the province because of
> revenge attacks by ethnic Albanians.
>
> Thousands of ethnic Albanians died during Yugoslav
> President Slobodan Milosevic' s 18-month crackdown
> on
> militants fighting for independence for Kosovo. Then
> there is the 10 years of oppression under the
> Milosevic regime for which many want recompense.
>
> In a place like Kosovska Mitrovica, 25 miles north
> of
> the provincial capital, Pristina, the dangers are
> intense. Just across the river on the north bank
> lies
> one of Kosovo' s only substantial remaining Serb
> population, a fact that has made the entire city
> unstable.
>
> Serbs on the wrong side of the divide would be
> particularly singled out for revenge. Another Serb
> on
> the ethnic Albanian side and under strict NATO
> protection was hacked to death recently by an
> attacker
> with an ax.
>
> Roganovic realizes this, and has faced her share of
> harassment. Intruders have ransacked her home,
> taking
> her history books, her bed linens, her dishes. Her
> telephone line doesn' t work -- even though she
> seems
> to be the only person in the building with such a
> problem.
>
> So great is the danger she faces that human rights
> workers familiar with her situation refused to
> permit
> photographs of her and her home, allowing an
> interview
> only on condition that her home' s location not be
> revealed.
>
> Even so, Roganovic doesn' t let on if she' s
> nervous,
> greeting her visitors with a hug and a kiss,
> offering
> her last bit of coffee in friendship, insisting that
> a
> few candies be carried away for later. She offers
> advice on staying safe, recounting the words of an
> old
> commander in the Partisans, the guerrilla fighters
> who
> fought the Nazis.
>
> " We used to have positions in the snow. (My
> commander) told me, ' If you fall asleep, you are
> dead, " ' she said. " I never forgot that lesson."
>
---
http://fr.news.yahoo.com/000330/2/antu.html
jeudi 30 mars 2000, 18h48
Suisse: près de 400 kilos d'héroïne et environ 290 kilos de
cocaïne saisis en 1999
BERNE (AP) -- L'an passé, ''toutes les drogues courantes étaient, comme
toujours,
disponibles à profusion et à bas prix en Suisse'', selon l'Office
fédéral de la police (OFP).
Pas moins de 397 kilos d'héroïne et 287 kilos de cocaïne ont été saisis,
le nombre des décès
dus à la drogue a une nouvelle fois régressé, passant de 210 à 181.
Quant aux trafiquants,
86% étaient des étrangers.
La diminution du nombre des décès dus à la consommation de stupéfiants
enregistrés par les polices cantonales s'est
poursuivie en 1999 avec 181 morts, contre 210 l'année précédente. Le
nombre record de 419 morts en 1992 a pu être
réduit de moitié grâce aux thérapies introduites, à la distribution de
drogue sous contrôle médical et aux diverses mesures
d'aide à la survie. Les spécialistes en matière de dépendance estiment
toutefois qu'il faudrait ajouter 200 décès
supplémentaires de toxicomanes ayant succombé à des maladies
infectieuses.
La police a saisi l'an dernier 397 kilos d'héroïne contre 403 kilos en
1998. Les saisies de cocaïne ont augmenté de 15%,
passant à 287,9 kilos.
L'héroïne consommée en Suisse arrive de Turquie, en empruntant les
différentes routes des
Balkans.
Le trafic est en grande partie contrôlé par des Albanais originaires du
Kosovo et de
l'Albanie, selon l'OFP.
Et en dépit du conflit du Kosovo, le marché n'a pas connu de problème
d'approvisionnement.
Le canton de Zurich est resté la plaque tournante du trafic: on y a
saisi 239 kilos d'héroïne, ce qui représente 60% de
l'ensemble des saisies effectuées l'an passé. Zurich est aussi demeurée
la porte d'entrée en Suisse pour la cocaïne, importée
en grande partie d'Amérique latine par voie aérienne. Près des trois
quarts de la cocaïne interceptée en Suisse ont été
découverts dans le canton de Zurich. Bien que le trafic soit toujours
aux mains de ressortissants d'Afrique noire et
d'Amérique du Sud, des Italiens et des Espagnols, ainsi que des groupes
de l'ex-Yougoslavie et de Turquie ont désormais
pris pied dans ce trafic.
La plupart des plantations de chanvre en Suisse ont servi à alimenter le
marché des stupéfiants. Selon les estimations de la
police, entre 1,5 et 10 tonnes de haschisch et de 50 à 200 tonnes de
marijuana sont ainsi produites annuellement en Suisse.
Les produits stupéfiants à base de chanvre ''made in Switzerland''
trouvent également preneur à l'étranger. La police a saisi
quelque 8,4 tonnes de produits cannabiniques en 1999, soit 6,5 tonnes de
moins que l'année précédente.
Après avoir connu un véritable boom dans les années 90, les saisies
d'ecstasy ont à nouveau diminué: 67.342 pilules ont été
confisquées contre 73.914 en 1998. Elle provenaient en majorité des
Pays-Bas.
En 1999, le nombre de violations de la loi sur les stupéfiants a diminué
de 3%, passant à 44.336. On a enregistré 3.715
plaintes pénales pour trafic de drogue, ce qui représente 8,4% du total
de plaintes. S'agissant des trafiquants, 86% étaient
des étrangers, selon l'Office fédéral de la police.
---
BLIC - Belgrade independent daily,
March 31, 2000
Kosovo narcotic dealers have five-time larger budget than the
international mission in the province
IN KOSOVO MARIHUANA IS NOT TREATED AS A NARCOTIC SINCE IT IS IN GENERAL
USE AND HAS THE PRICE AS CIGARETTES
Kosovska Mitrovica - Albanian narcotic dealers, called "fis" are
currently occupying the top of the world narcotic smugglers. More
frequently they are the cause of headache of Interlope. In relatively
short time they managed to take the leading position in the control of
world narco market. Arrival of KFOR changed nothing, so at the moment
the southern Serb province is a center for distribution of narcotics to
the Western Europe and North America.
Kosovo is full of all kinds of narcotics. Their prices are here half of
those in the European or American cities. Narcotics are being sold not
per gr. but per kilos. For example one kilo of heroine in Pristina costs
16,000 $. The price of joint is almost equal to the price of some fine
quality cigarettes.
Narcotics are arriving in Kosovo by Euro-Asian road from Iran, Pakistan,
Turkey, Bulgaria and Macedonia, or by sea around Greece and Albania.
Albanian narco-businessmen provide 5 tons of heroine from Kosovo to West
European market. Their profit is about 120 mills of $. In a year they
get more than 1 bill of $. Only for the purpose of comparison, this year
budget of the mission of international community in Kosovo is 210 mills
of $.
FBI admits it is relatively incapable of doing anything since, as FBI
claims, it is difficult to find a man that would infiltrate
"fis"
because of the language problem and lack of knowledge of Albanian
mentality.
Money earned from the dealing of narcotics is mainly used for purchase
of Serb houses and flats in Kosovo. In Kosovo Polje only, the Albanians
bought during the last four months 256 Serb houses and flats at the
price 100,000-250,000 German Marks per each.
Z.V. Vlaskalic
---
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0003/14/world/world10.html
Sydney Morning Herald (The Guardian)
Tuesday, March 14, 2000
Drugs 'pouring out of Kosovo' without check
By MAGGIE O'KANE in Belgrade
International agencies fighting the drug trade are
warning that Kosovo has become a "smugglers' paradise"
supplying up to 40 per cent of the heroin sold in
Europe and North America.
NATO-led forces, struggling to keep peace in the
province a year after the war, have no mandate to
fight drug traffickers, and - with the expulsion from
Kosovo of the Serb police, including the "4th unit"
narcotics squad - the smugglers are running the
"Balkan route" with complete freedom.
The peacekeepers of K-For "may as well be coming from
another planet when it comes to tackling these guys",
said Mr Marko Nicovic, a lawyer and vice-president of
the International Narcotics Enforcement Officers
Association, based in New York.
"It's the hardest narcotics ring to crack because it
is all run by families and they even have their own
language. Kosovo is set to become the cancer centre of
Europe, as western Europe will soon discover," he
said.
He estimates that the province's traffickers are now
handling between 4.5 and five tonnes of heroin a month
and growing fast.
This compares to the two tonnes they were shifting
before the Kosovo war of March-June last year, when
NATO bombing forced Serbia's regime to pull out of the
largely ethnic-Albanian province.
"It's coming through easier and cheaper, and there's
much more of it," Mr Nicovic said. "The price is going
down and if this goes on we are predicting a heroin
boom in western Europe as there was in the early 80s."
A trafficker in Belgrade confirmed that since the war
the Kosovo heroin dealers, most of them from four main
families, were concentrating on the western Europe and
United States markets.
A kilogram of heroin that was worth $US16,000
($26,000) in Kosovo or double that in Belgrade could
make $US64,000 on the British, Italian or Swiss
markets, said the 24-year-old heroin middleman. He
expected the Kosovo route to grow: "There's nobody to
stop them."
Only half the promised 5,000 policemen have arrived to
join the peace operation in the province, which is now
the main route for heroin flowing through some of the
world's most troubled areas - Afghanistan, northern
Iran, the southern states of the Russian Federation,
Azerbaijan, Turkey, Kosovo - into western Europe and
the US.
"It is the Colombia of Europe," said Mr Nicovic, who
was chief of the Yugoslav narcotics force until 1996.
"When Serb police were burning houses in Kosovo, they
were finding it [heroin] stuffed in the roof. As far
as I know there has not been a single report in the
last year of K-For seizing heroin. They are soldiers,
not criminal investigators."
Echoing this, an official at NATO in Brussels said:
"Generals do not want to turn their troops into cops
... They don't want their troops to get shot pursuing
black-marketeers."
There is no evidence that the ethnic Albanians' Kosovo
Liberation Army is involved directly in drug
smuggling. But according to the British-based
International Police Review, they may be dependent on
the drug families who, it says, partly funded the
KLA's operations in Kosovo last year.
When drug-squad chiefs from northern and eastern
Europe met in Sweden 10 days ago the Balkan route was
the main issue, according to the head of the Czech
narcotics agency, Mr Jiri Komorous.
"There are four paths of drug trafficking through the
Balkans to western Europe. We have to improve our
attempts to control the Kosovo Albanians."
The Kosovo mafia has been smuggling heroin since the
mid-80s, but since the Kosovo war they have come into
their own, according to Mr Nicovic. "You have an
entire country without a police force that knows what
is going on."
The Kosovo Albanian mafia is almost untouchable.
"Everything is worked out on the basis of the family
or clan structure - the Fic [brotherhood] - so it is
impossible to plant informers," said Mr Nicovic.
The Guardian
(see also:
http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/international/0,2846,146154,00.html )
---
Mother Jones Magazine
Heroin Heroes
The United States propped up the KLA in the Kosovo conflict. With
Milosevic gone, and no one in control, the former freedom fighters are
now transforming the province into a major conduit for global drug
trafficking.
by Peter Klebnikov
January/February 2000
When the bombs stopped falling over Yugoslavia last June, a flood of
humanity swept through the Balkans as thousands of Kosovar Albanians
returned home from refugee camps. But over the craggy mountains
separating Yugoslavia and Albania, a far less innocent traffic returned.
A fleet of Mercedes sedans without license plates lined the streets of
Kosovo's capital, Pristina, and young men with hooded eyes and bulky
suits checked into the top floors of showcase hotels such as the Rogner
in Tirana, the Albanian capital. It was time for criminal elements with
close ties to America's newest ally to reopen the traditional Balkan
Road -- one of the biggest conduits for global heroin trafficking. Law
enforcement officials in Europe have suspected for years that ties
existed between Kosovar rebels and Balkan drug smugglers. But in the six
months since Washington enthroned the Kosovo Liberation Army in that
Yugoslav province, KLA-associated drug traffickers have cemented their
influence and used their new status to increase heroin trafficking and
forge links with other nationalist rebel groups and drug cartels. The
benefits of the drug trade are evident around Pristina -- more so than
Western aid. "The new buildings, the better roads, and the sophisticated
weapons -- many of these have been bought by drugs," says Michel
Koutouzis, the Balkans region expert for the Global Drugs Monitor (OGD),
a Paris-based think tank. The repercussions of this drug connection are
only now emerging, and many Kosovo observers fear that the province
could be evolving into a virtual narco-state under the noses of 49,000
peacekeeping troops.
For hundreds of years, Kosovar Albanian smugglers have been among the
world's most accomplished dealers in contraband, aided by a propitious
geography of isolated ports and mountainous villages. Virtually every
stage of the Balkan heroin business, from refining to end-point
distribution, is directed by a loosely knit hierarchy known as "The 15
Families," who answer to the regional clans that run every aspect of
Albanian life.
The Kosovar Albanian traffickers are so successful, says a senior U.S.
State Department official, "because Albanians are organized in very
close-knit groups, linked by their ethnicity and extended family
connections."
The clans, in addition to their drug operations, maintained an armed
brigade that gradually evolved into the KLA. In the early 1990s, as the
Kosovar uprising in Yugoslavia grew, ethnic Albanian rebels there faced
increased financial needs. The 15 Families responded by boosting drug
trafficking and channeling money and weapons to the rebels in their
clans. As traffickers started taking bigger risks, drug seizures by
police across Europe skyrocketed from a kilo or two in the early 1980s
to multimillion-dollar hauls, culminating in the spectacular 1996 arrest
at Gradina, Yugoslavia, of two truckers running a load of more than half
a ton of heroin worth $50 million.
German Federal Police now say that Kosovar Albanians import 80 percent
of Europe's heroin. So dominant is the Kosovar presence in trafficking
that many European users refer to illicit drugs in general as "Albanka,"
or Albanian lady.
The Kosovar traffickers ship heroin exclusively from Asia's Golden
Crescent. It's an apparently inexhaustible source. At one end of the
crescent lies Afghanistan, which in 1999 surpassed Burma as the world's
largest producer of opium poppies. From there, the heroin base passes
through Iran to Turkey, where it is refined, and then into the hands of
the 15 Families, which operate out of the lawless border towns linking
Macedonia, Albania, and Serbia. Not surprisingly, the KLA has also
flourished there. According to the State Department, four to six tons of
heroin move through Turkey every month. "Not very much is stopped," says
one official. "We get just a fraction of the total." Initially, the
Kosovar traffickers used the direct Balkan route, carrying goods
overland by truck from Turkey and Yugoslavia into Europe. With the
Bosnian war, the direct route was shut down and two splinter routes
developed to bypass Yugoslavia.
The ascent of the Kosovar families to the top of the trafficking
hierarchy coincided with the sudden appearance of the KLA as a fighting
force in 1997. As Serbia unleashed its campaign of persecution against
ethnic Albanians, the diaspora mobilized. Hundreds of thousands of
expatriate Kosovars around the world funneled money to the insurrection.
Nobody sent more than the Kosovar traffickers -- some of the wealthiest
people of Kosovar extraction in Europe. According to news reports,
Kosovar Albanian traffickers launder $1.5 billion in profits from drug
and arms smuggling each year through a shadowy network of some 200
private banks and currency exchange offices. A congressional briefing
paper obtained by Mother Jones indicates: "We would be remiss to dismiss
allegations that between 30 and 50 percent of the KLA's money comes from
drugs."
As the war in Kosovo heated up, the drug traffickers began supplying the
KLA with weapons procured from Eastern European and Italian crime groups
in exchange for heroin. The 15 Families also lent their private armies
to fight alongside the KLA. Clad in new Swiss uniforms and equipped with
modern weaponry, these troops stood out among the ragtag irregulars of
the KLA. In all, this was a formidable aid package. It's therefore not
surprising, say European law enforcement officials, that the faction
that ultimately seized power in Kosovo -- the KLA under Hashim Thaci --
was the group that maintained the closest links to traffickers. "As the
biggest contributors, the drug traffickers may have gotten the most
influence in running the country," says Koutouzis. The congressional
brief explains how groups like the KLA become involved with drug barons.
"Such groups had it easier during the Cold War when they could seek out
patron states," it notes. "But today, with the decline in state
sponsorship of insurgent groups, private funding is critical to keep the
revolution alive."
The KLA's dependence on the drug lords is difficult to prove, but the
evidence is impossible to overlook:
In 1998, German Federal Police froze two bank accounts of the "United
Kosovo" organization in a DŸsseldorf bank after they discovered
deposits totaling several hundred thousand dollars from a convicted
Kosovar drug trafficker. According to at least one published report, the
accounts were controlled by Bujar Bukoshi, prime minister of the Kosovo
government in exile.
In early 1999, an Italian court in Brindisi convicted an Albanian heroin
trafficker named Amarildo Vrioni, who admitted obtaining weapons for the
KLA from the Mafia in exchange for drugs.
Last February 23, Czech police arrested Princ Dobroshi, the head of a
Kosovar drug gang. While searching his apartment, they discovered
evidence that he had placed orders for light infantry weapons and rocket
systems. No one questioned what a small-time dealer would be doing with
rockets. Only later did Czech police reveal he was shipping them to the
KLA. The Czechs extradited Dobroshi to Norway, where he had escaped from
prison in 1997 while serving a 14-year sentence for heroin trafficking.
In Kosovo, it's hard to separate a legal organizational structure from
an illegal one. "A trafficker can sell blue jeans one day and heroin the
next," says Koutouzis. "The same supply network is used. There are no
ethical distinctions. Heroin is just another way of making money." It
was the disparate structure of the KLA, Koutouzis says, that facilitated
the drug-smuggling explosion. "It permitted a democratization of drug
trafficking, where small-time people get involved, and everyone
contributes a part of his profit to his clan leader in the KLA," he
explains. "The more illegal the activity, the more money the clan gets
from the traffickers. So it's in the interest of the clan to promote
drug trafficking."
According to Marko Nicovic, the former chief of police in Belgrade, now
an investigator who works closely with Interpol, the international
police agency, 400 to 500 Kosovars move shipments in the 20-kilo range,
while about 5,000 Kosovar Albanians are small-timers, handling shipments
of less than two kilos. At one point in 1996, he says, more than 800
ethnic Albanians were in jail in Germany on narcotics charges. In many
places, Kosovar traffickers gained a foothold through raw violence.
According to a 1999 German Federal Police report, "The ethnic Albanian
gangsÉhave been involved in drugs, weapons traffickingÉblackmail,
and murder.ÉThey are increasingly prone to violence."
Tony White of the United Nations Drug Control Program agrees with this
assessment. "They are more willing to use violence than any other
group," he says. "They have confronted the established order throughout
Europe and pushed out the Lebanese, Pakistani, and Italian cartels." Few
gangs are willing to tangle with the Kosovars. Those that do often pay
the ultimate price. In January 1999, Kosovar Albanians killed nine
people in Milan, Italy, during a two-week bloodbath between rival heroin
groups.
Daut Kadriovski, the reputed boss of one of the 15 Families, embodies
the tenacity of the top Kosovar drug traffickers. A Yugoslav Interior
Ministry report identifies him as one of Europe's biggest heroin
dealers, and Nicovic calls him a "major financial resource for the KLA."
Through his family links, Nicovic says, Kadriovski smuggled more than
100 kilos of heroin into New York and Philadelphia. He lived comfortably
in Istanbul and specialized in creative trafficking solutions, once
dispatching a shipment of heroin in the hollowed-out accordion cases of
a popular traveling Albanian folk music group. German authorities
eventually arrested him in 1985 with four kilos of heroin. They
confiscated his yachts, cars, and villas, and sent him to prison.
Kadriovski's reign appeared to be over.
But Kadriovski greased his way with narco-dollars. He escaped from
prison by bribing guards, and in 1993 he headed for the United States,
where it's believed he continues to operate. According to Nicovic,
Kadriovski reportedly funneled money to the KLA from New York through a
leading Kosovar businessman and declared KLA contributor. "Kadriovski
feels more secure with his KLA friends in power," Nicovic says.
The U.S. representatives of four other heroin families are suspected by
Interpol of having sent money for the uprising, according to Nicovic.
These men typically maintain links with local distributors, he says, and
move heroin through a network of small import-export companies in New
York and Philadelphia.
Now free of the war and the repressive Yugoslav police machine, drug
traffickers have reopened the old Balkan Road. With the KLA in power --
and in the spotlight -- the top trafficking families have begun to seek
relative respectability without decreasing their heroin shipments. "The
Kosovars are trying to position themselves in higher levels of
trafficking," says the U.N.'s Tony White. "They want to get away from
the violence of the streets and attract less attention. Criminals like
to move up like any other business, and the Kosovars are becoming
business leaders. They have become equal partners with the Turks."
Italian national police discovered this new Kosovar outreach last year
when they undertook "Operation Pristina." The carabinieri uncovered a
chain of connections that originated in Kosovo and stretched through
nine European countries, extending into Central Asia, South America, and
the United States.
"People from Pristina worked all over Europe and the world," says
JŸrgen Storbeck, director of Europol, the cooperative police force of
the European Union. "They used sophisticated methods, taking advantage
of places where police work was not so successful, like Eastern Europe."
Eventually, 40 people were arrested and 170 kilos of heroin were seized
in an operation that involved seven European police departments. As
their business reaches a saturation point in Europe, Kosovar traffickers
are looking more to the West. It's a smart business move. The United
States has seen a marked shift from cocaine to heroin use. According to
recent DEA statistics, Afghan heroin accounted for almost 20 percent of
the smack seized in this country -- nearly double the percentage taken
four years earlier. Much of it is distributed by Kosovar Albanians.
The Clinton administration has launched a vigorous crackdown on
Colombian heroin. As the campaign intensifies, some White House
officials fear Kosovar heroin could replace the Colombian supply. "Even
if we were to eliminate all the heroin production in Colombia, by no
means do we think there would be no more heroin coming into the United
States," says Bob Agresti of the White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy. "Look at the numbers. Colombia accounts for only six
percent of the world's heroin. Southwest Asia produces 75 percent."
Perhaps most alarmingly, Kosovar drug dealers associated with the KLA
have begun to form partnerships with Colombian traffickers -- the
world's most notorious drug lords. "We have an all-new situation now,"
says Europol's Storbeck. "Colombians like to use Kosovar groups for
distribution of cocaine. The Albanians are getting stronger and
stronger, and there is a certain job sharing now. They are used by Turks
for smuggling into the European Union and by Colombians for distribution
of cocaine."
Washington clearly hopes the KLA will disentangle itself from its
drug-running friends now that it's in power, but this may not be easy.
"The KLA owes a lot of debts to the traffickers and holy warriors," says
Koutouzis. "They are being pressured to assist other insurrections."
Already, the OGD has reports of KLA weapons being routed to the newest
Muslim holy war in Chechnya.
The congressional brief addresses the KLA's future: "One of the problems
you have with organizations that engage in drug trafficking is that they
become addicted to the trade and the income it brings," the report
notes. "Later on in life, even if they want to stop trafficking in
drugs, it's not always possible."
Marko Nicovic, the former Belgrade police chief, puts it a bit more
succinctly: "If Kosovo gets full autonomy, they may well double the
production of heroin," he says. "Kosovo will become a smuggler's
paradise, its doors open to every global criminal." The U.S. Foreign
Assistance Act of 1961 prohibits aid to any entity that has colluded
with narcotics traffickers. Similarly, the Balkan peace agreement
brokered in June prohibits the KLA from engaging in criminal activity.
And so the Clinton administration tries to steer clear of questions
suggesting the KLA has joined a rogues' gallery of narco-leaders. KLA
drug-running is the last thing the administration wants to tackle with
the success of its "moral war" already open to question.
Late last spring, Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) sent a letter to
President Clinton requesting an assessment of KLA drug trafficking. The
president responded quickly, telling Grassley in a June 15 letter that
he had demanded an intelligence assessment from the CIA and the DEA on
Kosovar drug trafficking. "Neither agency," the president wrote, "has
any intelligence that indicates the KLA has either been engaged in other
criminal activity or has direct links to any organized crime groups."
Clinton did acknowledge that crime groups "have contributed at least
limited funds and possibly small arms to the KLA." He promised to
"monitor" narcotics distribution there in the future. "There was no
action," said a congressional source close to Grassley. "It was a
nonanswer."
White House officials deny a whitewashing of KLA activities. "We do care
about [KLA drug trafficking]," says Agresti. "It's just that we've got
our hands full trying to bring peace there." The DEA is equally reticent
to address the issue. According to Michel Koutouzis, the DEA's website
once contained a section detailing Kosovar trafficking, but a week
before the U.S.-led bombings began, the section disappeared. "The DEA
doesn't want to talk publicly [about the KLA]," says OGD director Alain
Labrousse. "It's embarrassing to them." High-ranking U.S. officials are
dismayed that the KLA was installed in power without public discussion
or a thorough check of its background. "I don't think we're doing
anything there to stem the drugs," says a senior State Department
official. "It's out of control. It should be a high priority. We've
warned about it."
Even if it tried to stop Kosovar heroin, the U.S. would be hard-pressed
to do so. "Nobody's in control in Kosovo," adds the State Department
official. "They don't even have a police force." Regardless of what it
says, there's little indication that the administration wants to do
anything with the intelligence available about its newest ally. "There
is no doubt that the KLA is a major trafficking organization," said a
congressional expert who monitors the drug trade and requested
anonymity. "But we have a relationship with the KLA, and the
administration doesn't want to damage [its] reputation. We are partners.
The attitude is: The drugs are not coming here, so let others deal with
it."
That phrase is troublingly familiar. It raises the question: Is our
embrace of the KLA the latest in an ignoble tradition of aiding drug
traffickers for political reasons? Similar recipients of U.S. largesse
have included the Nicaraguan Contras, former Panamanian strongman Manuel
Noriega, the Afghan Taliban, and Burma's Khun Sa. Early in 1999, as the
war against Serbia raged, Congress voted to fund the KLA's drive for
independence. In the days ahead, our embrace of the KLA may come to
haunt us. Elections scheduled for this spring in Kosovo have been
delayed; but no matter when they occur, observers say, their outcome is
already certain. The time-honored clans will win. And the men in
oversized suits -- the kind who sing allegiance to democracy and global
capitalism while conducting business in the back of an unlicensed
Mercedes -- will be running the show.
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
* Il mercato dei narcotici in Svizzera e' controllato dall'UCK (AP)
* Boom delle droghe leggere in Kosmet (Blic)
* Dal "Kosova" liberato si puo' finalmente esportare droga ovunque
(The Guardian)
* HEROIN HEROES (Mother Jones Magazine)
---
Una donna serba difende la sua casa
Di DANIKA KIRKA, Associated Press 23/3/2000
KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Jugoslavia (AP) -- A chiunque possa pensare di
poterla costringere ad uscire dalla sua casa, Jelisaveta Raganovic manda
un messaggio: Prima dovrete passare sul mio corpo!
Potrebbe non sembrare una gran minaccia venendo da una donna di 80 anni,
l'ultima serba che si ritiene sia ormai da sola nella zona di etnia
albanese della citta' divisa di Kosovska Mitrovica.
Ma comunque, la Sig.ra Raganovic ha un piano. Ogni notte, questa
veterana della guerriglia comunista di Josip Broz Tito, durante la II
Guerra Mondiale, prende la sua posizione di sentinella fuori dalla sua
casa. Stando seduta in una poltrona vicino ad una scatola di pietre,
aspetta tutta la notte, pronta a colpire qualsiasi invasore che salga le
sue scale.
"Lo so che sto per morire", ha detto durante un'intervista mercoledi'.
"Ma moriro' da uomo. Non voglio morire da codarda".
Il problema della Raganovic mostra proprio a quanta pressione
debbano essere sottoposti i serbi che vivono in Kosovo, specialmente
in un luogo come la pietrosa citta' industriale di Kosovska Mitrovica,
dove gli scontri fra le etnie albanesi e serbe sull'altra sponda del
fiume Ibar esplodono con regolarita'.
La zona sud in effetti e' tranquilla, in parte perche' la popolazione
e' praticamente omogenea. L'agenzia ONU per i rifugiati stima che non
piu' di 19 serbi vivano qui ora. Tutti, tranne la Raganovic, vivono in
una chiesa sotto protezione NATO.
Anche alla Raganovic fu data la possibilita' di partire per andare in
posto piu' sicuro, che le avrebbe permesso una vita piu' normale. Tutta
la sua famiglia l'ha ripetutamente pregata di andare a vivere con loro
in Vojvodina, una provincia nel nord della Serbia.
Lei ha rifiutato, scegliendo invece di confidare nei soldati francesi
che facevano la guardia alla sua casa.
Per lei loro sono piu' che peacekeeper, essi sono compagni, uomini con
cui sente di poter trattare da soldato a soldato. I soldati le portano
la carne e le pentole con la marmellata. La portano a far la spesa, le
fanno compagnia.
Il Maggiore Nicolas Naubin (portavoce francese) ha detto che i
peacekeepers capiscono che la sua situazione e' precaria e pertanto
hanno fatto uno sforzo speciale per prendersi cura di lei.
Dovranno lavorare piu' duramente. Sino ad ora la Nato ha fallito nella
creazione di un ambiente sicuro in Kosovo, in particolare per i serbi
che stanno abbandonando la regione a causa degli attacchi per vendetta
degli albanesi.
Migliaia di albanesi morirono durante gli scontri tra Milosevic e le
milizie che combattevano per l'indipendenza del Kosovo. Poi vi e' la
oppressione di 10 anni sotto il regime di Milosevic per la quale molti
vogliono una sorta di risarcimento.
In un posto come Kosovska Mitrovica, 25 miglia a nord della capitale
della provincia, Pristina, i pericoli sono molti. Appena attraversato il
fiume, sulla riva nord rimane uno degli ultimi gruppi di serbi del
Kosovo, un fatto che ha reso tutta la citta' instabile.
I serbi nella zona sbagliata della suddivisione sarebbero obbiettivi
molto facili per la vendetta. Recentemente un'altro serbo dalla parte
albanese, sotto stretto controllo NATO, e' stato ucciso con una scure.
La Raganovic comprende questa situazione ed ha affrontato la sua razione
di violenza. Alcuni hanno invaso la sua casa saccheggiandola.
Hanno preso i suoi libri di storia, la sua biancheria, i suoi piatti.
La sua linea telefonica non funziona - anche se sembra che lei sia
l'unica inquilina del suo palazzo con un tale problema.
Cosi' grande e' il pericolo che deve affrontare, che le organizzazioni
che si occupano dei diritti umani conoscendola non permettono che
la si fotografi o che si fotografi la sua casa. Permettono interviste
a condizione che la posizione della sua casa non sia rivelata.
Anche cosi', la Sig.ra Raganovic non mostra di essere nervosa, saluta
chi la viene a trovare con un abbraccio ed un bacio. Offre del caffe'
generosamente ed insiste a regalare dei dolci da portar via.
E' lei a dare consigli su come stare sicuri, ricordando le parole di un
vecchio comandante dei partigiani, i guerriglieri che combatterono il
nazismo.
Dice: "Noi eravamo abituati a mantenere le posizioni nella neve.
(Il mio comandante) mi diceva: 'Se ti addormenti, sei morta'.
Io non ho mai dimenticato quella lezione."
http://www.newsday.com/ap/international/ap640.htm
> March 23, 2000
>
> Serb Woman Defends Her Home
> By DANICA KIRKA / Associated Press Writer
>
> KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Yugoslavia (AP) -- To anyone who
> might think of driving her from her home, Jelisaveta
> Roganovic has a message: You' ll have to get past me
> first.
>
> It might not seem like much of a threat coming from
> a
> woman who is 80 years old, the last Serb believed to
> be living alone on the ethnic Albanian side of the
> divided city of Kosovska Mitrovica.
>
> But then again, Roganovic has a plan.
>
> Every night, this veteran of Josip Broz Tito' s
> World
> War II communist guerrilla army takes up her
> position
> as a sentinel outside her home. Sitting in a lawn
> chair beside a box of rocks, she waits all night
> long,
> ready to pelt any intruder coming up her stairs.
>
> " I know I' m going to die, " she said during an
> interview Wednesday. " But I' m going to die like a
> man. I don' t want to die like a coward."
>
> Roganovic' s dilemma shows just how much pressure
> Serbs living in Kosovo face right now, especially in
> a
> place like the gritty industrial city of Kosovska
> Mitrovica, where riots between ethnic Albanians and
> Serbs on the other side of the Ibar River break out
> with some regularity.
>
> On the south side though, things are usually quiet
> --
> in part because the population is almost completely
> homogenous. The U.N. refugee agency estimates that
> no
> more than 19 Serbs live here now. All but Roganovic
> live together under NATO protection at a church.
>
> Roganovic was given a chance to leave, too, to go to
> a
> place that was safer and would allow her a more
> normal
> life. Her family has been begging her to come live
> with them in Vojvodina, a province in northern
> Serbia.
>
>
> She refuses, choosing instead to trust the French
> soldiers who guard her home. To her they are more
> than
> peacekeepers, they are comrades, men she feels she
> can
> deal with, soldier to soldier. They bring her tins
> of
> meat and pots of jam. They take her shopping. They
> keep her company.
>
> The peacekeepers, though, realize that her situation
> is precarious and have made a special effort to take
> care of her, said French Maj. Nicolas Naubin, a
> spokesman for French troops.
>
> They are going to have to work harder.
>
> NATO has failed so far to create an overall
> environment of security in Kosovo, particularly for
> Serbs, who have been fleeing the province because of
> revenge attacks by ethnic Albanians.
>
> Thousands of ethnic Albanians died during Yugoslav
> President Slobodan Milosevic' s 18-month crackdown
> on
> militants fighting for independence for Kosovo. Then
> there is the 10 years of oppression under the
> Milosevic regime for which many want recompense.
>
> In a place like Kosovska Mitrovica, 25 miles north
> of
> the provincial capital, Pristina, the dangers are
> intense. Just across the river on the north bank
> lies
> one of Kosovo' s only substantial remaining Serb
> population, a fact that has made the entire city
> unstable.
>
> Serbs on the wrong side of the divide would be
> particularly singled out for revenge. Another Serb
> on
> the ethnic Albanian side and under strict NATO
> protection was hacked to death recently by an
> attacker
> with an ax.
>
> Roganovic realizes this, and has faced her share of
> harassment. Intruders have ransacked her home,
> taking
> her history books, her bed linens, her dishes. Her
> telephone line doesn' t work -- even though she
> seems
> to be the only person in the building with such a
> problem.
>
> So great is the danger she faces that human rights
> workers familiar with her situation refused to
> permit
> photographs of her and her home, allowing an
> interview
> only on condition that her home' s location not be
> revealed.
>
> Even so, Roganovic doesn' t let on if she' s
> nervous,
> greeting her visitors with a hug and a kiss,
> offering
> her last bit of coffee in friendship, insisting that
> a
> few candies be carried away for later. She offers
> advice on staying safe, recounting the words of an
> old
> commander in the Partisans, the guerrilla fighters
> who
> fought the Nazis.
>
> " We used to have positions in the snow. (My
> commander) told me, ' If you fall asleep, you are
> dead, " ' she said. " I never forgot that lesson."
>
---
http://fr.news.yahoo.com/000330/2/antu.html
jeudi 30 mars 2000, 18h48
Suisse: près de 400 kilos d'héroïne et environ 290 kilos de
cocaïne saisis en 1999
BERNE (AP) -- L'an passé, ''toutes les drogues courantes étaient, comme
toujours,
disponibles à profusion et à bas prix en Suisse'', selon l'Office
fédéral de la police (OFP).
Pas moins de 397 kilos d'héroïne et 287 kilos de cocaïne ont été saisis,
le nombre des décès
dus à la drogue a une nouvelle fois régressé, passant de 210 à 181.
Quant aux trafiquants,
86% étaient des étrangers.
La diminution du nombre des décès dus à la consommation de stupéfiants
enregistrés par les polices cantonales s'est
poursuivie en 1999 avec 181 morts, contre 210 l'année précédente. Le
nombre record de 419 morts en 1992 a pu être
réduit de moitié grâce aux thérapies introduites, à la distribution de
drogue sous contrôle médical et aux diverses mesures
d'aide à la survie. Les spécialistes en matière de dépendance estiment
toutefois qu'il faudrait ajouter 200 décès
supplémentaires de toxicomanes ayant succombé à des maladies
infectieuses.
La police a saisi l'an dernier 397 kilos d'héroïne contre 403 kilos en
1998. Les saisies de cocaïne ont augmenté de 15%,
passant à 287,9 kilos.
L'héroïne consommée en Suisse arrive de Turquie, en empruntant les
différentes routes des
Balkans.
Le trafic est en grande partie contrôlé par des Albanais originaires du
Kosovo et de
l'Albanie, selon l'OFP.
Et en dépit du conflit du Kosovo, le marché n'a pas connu de problème
d'approvisionnement.
Le canton de Zurich est resté la plaque tournante du trafic: on y a
saisi 239 kilos d'héroïne, ce qui représente 60% de
l'ensemble des saisies effectuées l'an passé. Zurich est aussi demeurée
la porte d'entrée en Suisse pour la cocaïne, importée
en grande partie d'Amérique latine par voie aérienne. Près des trois
quarts de la cocaïne interceptée en Suisse ont été
découverts dans le canton de Zurich. Bien que le trafic soit toujours
aux mains de ressortissants d'Afrique noire et
d'Amérique du Sud, des Italiens et des Espagnols, ainsi que des groupes
de l'ex-Yougoslavie et de Turquie ont désormais
pris pied dans ce trafic.
La plupart des plantations de chanvre en Suisse ont servi à alimenter le
marché des stupéfiants. Selon les estimations de la
police, entre 1,5 et 10 tonnes de haschisch et de 50 à 200 tonnes de
marijuana sont ainsi produites annuellement en Suisse.
Les produits stupéfiants à base de chanvre ''made in Switzerland''
trouvent également preneur à l'étranger. La police a saisi
quelque 8,4 tonnes de produits cannabiniques en 1999, soit 6,5 tonnes de
moins que l'année précédente.
Après avoir connu un véritable boom dans les années 90, les saisies
d'ecstasy ont à nouveau diminué: 67.342 pilules ont été
confisquées contre 73.914 en 1998. Elle provenaient en majorité des
Pays-Bas.
En 1999, le nombre de violations de la loi sur les stupéfiants a diminué
de 3%, passant à 44.336. On a enregistré 3.715
plaintes pénales pour trafic de drogue, ce qui représente 8,4% du total
de plaintes. S'agissant des trafiquants, 86% étaient
des étrangers, selon l'Office fédéral de la police.
---
BLIC - Belgrade independent daily,
March 31, 2000
Kosovo narcotic dealers have five-time larger budget than the
international mission in the province
IN KOSOVO MARIHUANA IS NOT TREATED AS A NARCOTIC SINCE IT IS IN GENERAL
USE AND HAS THE PRICE AS CIGARETTES
Kosovska Mitrovica - Albanian narcotic dealers, called "fis" are
currently occupying the top of the world narcotic smugglers. More
frequently they are the cause of headache of Interlope. In relatively
short time they managed to take the leading position in the control of
world narco market. Arrival of KFOR changed nothing, so at the moment
the southern Serb province is a center for distribution of narcotics to
the Western Europe and North America.
Kosovo is full of all kinds of narcotics. Their prices are here half of
those in the European or American cities. Narcotics are being sold not
per gr. but per kilos. For example one kilo of heroine in Pristina costs
16,000 $. The price of joint is almost equal to the price of some fine
quality cigarettes.
Narcotics are arriving in Kosovo by Euro-Asian road from Iran, Pakistan,
Turkey, Bulgaria and Macedonia, or by sea around Greece and Albania.
Albanian narco-businessmen provide 5 tons of heroine from Kosovo to West
European market. Their profit is about 120 mills of $. In a year they
get more than 1 bill of $. Only for the purpose of comparison, this year
budget of the mission of international community in Kosovo is 210 mills
of $.
FBI admits it is relatively incapable of doing anything since, as FBI
claims, it is difficult to find a man that would infiltrate
"fis"
because of the language problem and lack of knowledge of Albanian
mentality.
Money earned from the dealing of narcotics is mainly used for purchase
of Serb houses and flats in Kosovo. In Kosovo Polje only, the Albanians
bought during the last four months 256 Serb houses and flats at the
price 100,000-250,000 German Marks per each.
Z.V. Vlaskalic
---
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0003/14/world/world10.html
Sydney Morning Herald (The Guardian)
Tuesday, March 14, 2000
Drugs 'pouring out of Kosovo' without check
By MAGGIE O'KANE in Belgrade
International agencies fighting the drug trade are
warning that Kosovo has become a "smugglers' paradise"
supplying up to 40 per cent of the heroin sold in
Europe and North America.
NATO-led forces, struggling to keep peace in the
province a year after the war, have no mandate to
fight drug traffickers, and - with the expulsion from
Kosovo of the Serb police, including the "4th unit"
narcotics squad - the smugglers are running the
"Balkan route" with complete freedom.
The peacekeepers of K-For "may as well be coming from
another planet when it comes to tackling these guys",
said Mr Marko Nicovic, a lawyer and vice-president of
the International Narcotics Enforcement Officers
Association, based in New York.
"It's the hardest narcotics ring to crack because it
is all run by families and they even have their own
language. Kosovo is set to become the cancer centre of
Europe, as western Europe will soon discover," he
said.
He estimates that the province's traffickers are now
handling between 4.5 and five tonnes of heroin a month
and growing fast.
This compares to the two tonnes they were shifting
before the Kosovo war of March-June last year, when
NATO bombing forced Serbia's regime to pull out of the
largely ethnic-Albanian province.
"It's coming through easier and cheaper, and there's
much more of it," Mr Nicovic said. "The price is going
down and if this goes on we are predicting a heroin
boom in western Europe as there was in the early 80s."
A trafficker in Belgrade confirmed that since the war
the Kosovo heroin dealers, most of them from four main
families, were concentrating on the western Europe and
United States markets.
A kilogram of heroin that was worth $US16,000
($26,000) in Kosovo or double that in Belgrade could
make $US64,000 on the British, Italian or Swiss
markets, said the 24-year-old heroin middleman. He
expected the Kosovo route to grow: "There's nobody to
stop them."
Only half the promised 5,000 policemen have arrived to
join the peace operation in the province, which is now
the main route for heroin flowing through some of the
world's most troubled areas - Afghanistan, northern
Iran, the southern states of the Russian Federation,
Azerbaijan, Turkey, Kosovo - into western Europe and
the US.
"It is the Colombia of Europe," said Mr Nicovic, who
was chief of the Yugoslav narcotics force until 1996.
"When Serb police were burning houses in Kosovo, they
were finding it [heroin] stuffed in the roof. As far
as I know there has not been a single report in the
last year of K-For seizing heroin. They are soldiers,
not criminal investigators."
Echoing this, an official at NATO in Brussels said:
"Generals do not want to turn their troops into cops
... They don't want their troops to get shot pursuing
black-marketeers."
There is no evidence that the ethnic Albanians' Kosovo
Liberation Army is involved directly in drug
smuggling. But according to the British-based
International Police Review, they may be dependent on
the drug families who, it says, partly funded the
KLA's operations in Kosovo last year.
When drug-squad chiefs from northern and eastern
Europe met in Sweden 10 days ago the Balkan route was
the main issue, according to the head of the Czech
narcotics agency, Mr Jiri Komorous.
"There are four paths of drug trafficking through the
Balkans to western Europe. We have to improve our
attempts to control the Kosovo Albanians."
The Kosovo mafia has been smuggling heroin since the
mid-80s, but since the Kosovo war they have come into
their own, according to Mr Nicovic. "You have an
entire country without a police force that knows what
is going on."
The Kosovo Albanian mafia is almost untouchable.
"Everything is worked out on the basis of the family
or clan structure - the Fic [brotherhood] - so it is
impossible to plant informers," said Mr Nicovic.
The Guardian
(see also:
http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/international/0,2846,146154,00.html )
---
Mother Jones Magazine
Heroin Heroes
The United States propped up the KLA in the Kosovo conflict. With
Milosevic gone, and no one in control, the former freedom fighters are
now transforming the province into a major conduit for global drug
trafficking.
by Peter Klebnikov
January/February 2000
When the bombs stopped falling over Yugoslavia last June, a flood of
humanity swept through the Balkans as thousands of Kosovar Albanians
returned home from refugee camps. But over the craggy mountains
separating Yugoslavia and Albania, a far less innocent traffic returned.
A fleet of Mercedes sedans without license plates lined the streets of
Kosovo's capital, Pristina, and young men with hooded eyes and bulky
suits checked into the top floors of showcase hotels such as the Rogner
in Tirana, the Albanian capital. It was time for criminal elements with
close ties to America's newest ally to reopen the traditional Balkan
Road -- one of the biggest conduits for global heroin trafficking. Law
enforcement officials in Europe have suspected for years that ties
existed between Kosovar rebels and Balkan drug smugglers. But in the six
months since Washington enthroned the Kosovo Liberation Army in that
Yugoslav province, KLA-associated drug traffickers have cemented their
influence and used their new status to increase heroin trafficking and
forge links with other nationalist rebel groups and drug cartels. The
benefits of the drug trade are evident around Pristina -- more so than
Western aid. "The new buildings, the better roads, and the sophisticated
weapons -- many of these have been bought by drugs," says Michel
Koutouzis, the Balkans region expert for the Global Drugs Monitor (OGD),
a Paris-based think tank. The repercussions of this drug connection are
only now emerging, and many Kosovo observers fear that the province
could be evolving into a virtual narco-state under the noses of 49,000
peacekeeping troops.
For hundreds of years, Kosovar Albanian smugglers have been among the
world's most accomplished dealers in contraband, aided by a propitious
geography of isolated ports and mountainous villages. Virtually every
stage of the Balkan heroin business, from refining to end-point
distribution, is directed by a loosely knit hierarchy known as "The 15
Families," who answer to the regional clans that run every aspect of
Albanian life.
The Kosovar Albanian traffickers are so successful, says a senior U.S.
State Department official, "because Albanians are organized in very
close-knit groups, linked by their ethnicity and extended family
connections."
The clans, in addition to their drug operations, maintained an armed
brigade that gradually evolved into the KLA. In the early 1990s, as the
Kosovar uprising in Yugoslavia grew, ethnic Albanian rebels there faced
increased financial needs. The 15 Families responded by boosting drug
trafficking and channeling money and weapons to the rebels in their
clans. As traffickers started taking bigger risks, drug seizures by
police across Europe skyrocketed from a kilo or two in the early 1980s
to multimillion-dollar hauls, culminating in the spectacular 1996 arrest
at Gradina, Yugoslavia, of two truckers running a load of more than half
a ton of heroin worth $50 million.
German Federal Police now say that Kosovar Albanians import 80 percent
of Europe's heroin. So dominant is the Kosovar presence in trafficking
that many European users refer to illicit drugs in general as "Albanka,"
or Albanian lady.
The Kosovar traffickers ship heroin exclusively from Asia's Golden
Crescent. It's an apparently inexhaustible source. At one end of the
crescent lies Afghanistan, which in 1999 surpassed Burma as the world's
largest producer of opium poppies. From there, the heroin base passes
through Iran to Turkey, where it is refined, and then into the hands of
the 15 Families, which operate out of the lawless border towns linking
Macedonia, Albania, and Serbia. Not surprisingly, the KLA has also
flourished there. According to the State Department, four to six tons of
heroin move through Turkey every month. "Not very much is stopped," says
one official. "We get just a fraction of the total." Initially, the
Kosovar traffickers used the direct Balkan route, carrying goods
overland by truck from Turkey and Yugoslavia into Europe. With the
Bosnian war, the direct route was shut down and two splinter routes
developed to bypass Yugoslavia.
The ascent of the Kosovar families to the top of the trafficking
hierarchy coincided with the sudden appearance of the KLA as a fighting
force in 1997. As Serbia unleashed its campaign of persecution against
ethnic Albanians, the diaspora mobilized. Hundreds of thousands of
expatriate Kosovars around the world funneled money to the insurrection.
Nobody sent more than the Kosovar traffickers -- some of the wealthiest
people of Kosovar extraction in Europe. According to news reports,
Kosovar Albanian traffickers launder $1.5 billion in profits from drug
and arms smuggling each year through a shadowy network of some 200
private banks and currency exchange offices. A congressional briefing
paper obtained by Mother Jones indicates: "We would be remiss to dismiss
allegations that between 30 and 50 percent of the KLA's money comes from
drugs."
As the war in Kosovo heated up, the drug traffickers began supplying the
KLA with weapons procured from Eastern European and Italian crime groups
in exchange for heroin. The 15 Families also lent their private armies
to fight alongside the KLA. Clad in new Swiss uniforms and equipped with
modern weaponry, these troops stood out among the ragtag irregulars of
the KLA. In all, this was a formidable aid package. It's therefore not
surprising, say European law enforcement officials, that the faction
that ultimately seized power in Kosovo -- the KLA under Hashim Thaci --
was the group that maintained the closest links to traffickers. "As the
biggest contributors, the drug traffickers may have gotten the most
influence in running the country," says Koutouzis. The congressional
brief explains how groups like the KLA become involved with drug barons.
"Such groups had it easier during the Cold War when they could seek out
patron states," it notes. "But today, with the decline in state
sponsorship of insurgent groups, private funding is critical to keep the
revolution alive."
The KLA's dependence on the drug lords is difficult to prove, but the
evidence is impossible to overlook:
In 1998, German Federal Police froze two bank accounts of the "United
Kosovo" organization in a DŸsseldorf bank after they discovered
deposits totaling several hundred thousand dollars from a convicted
Kosovar drug trafficker. According to at least one published report, the
accounts were controlled by Bujar Bukoshi, prime minister of the Kosovo
government in exile.
In early 1999, an Italian court in Brindisi convicted an Albanian heroin
trafficker named Amarildo Vrioni, who admitted obtaining weapons for the
KLA from the Mafia in exchange for drugs.
Last February 23, Czech police arrested Princ Dobroshi, the head of a
Kosovar drug gang. While searching his apartment, they discovered
evidence that he had placed orders for light infantry weapons and rocket
systems. No one questioned what a small-time dealer would be doing with
rockets. Only later did Czech police reveal he was shipping them to the
KLA. The Czechs extradited Dobroshi to Norway, where he had escaped from
prison in 1997 while serving a 14-year sentence for heroin trafficking.
In Kosovo, it's hard to separate a legal organizational structure from
an illegal one. "A trafficker can sell blue jeans one day and heroin the
next," says Koutouzis. "The same supply network is used. There are no
ethical distinctions. Heroin is just another way of making money." It
was the disparate structure of the KLA, Koutouzis says, that facilitated
the drug-smuggling explosion. "It permitted a democratization of drug
trafficking, where small-time people get involved, and everyone
contributes a part of his profit to his clan leader in the KLA," he
explains. "The more illegal the activity, the more money the clan gets
from the traffickers. So it's in the interest of the clan to promote
drug trafficking."
According to Marko Nicovic, the former chief of police in Belgrade, now
an investigator who works closely with Interpol, the international
police agency, 400 to 500 Kosovars move shipments in the 20-kilo range,
while about 5,000 Kosovar Albanians are small-timers, handling shipments
of less than two kilos. At one point in 1996, he says, more than 800
ethnic Albanians were in jail in Germany on narcotics charges. In many
places, Kosovar traffickers gained a foothold through raw violence.
According to a 1999 German Federal Police report, "The ethnic Albanian
gangsÉhave been involved in drugs, weapons traffickingÉblackmail,
and murder.ÉThey are increasingly prone to violence."
Tony White of the United Nations Drug Control Program agrees with this
assessment. "They are more willing to use violence than any other
group," he says. "They have confronted the established order throughout
Europe and pushed out the Lebanese, Pakistani, and Italian cartels." Few
gangs are willing to tangle with the Kosovars. Those that do often pay
the ultimate price. In January 1999, Kosovar Albanians killed nine
people in Milan, Italy, during a two-week bloodbath between rival heroin
groups.
Daut Kadriovski, the reputed boss of one of the 15 Families, embodies
the tenacity of the top Kosovar drug traffickers. A Yugoslav Interior
Ministry report identifies him as one of Europe's biggest heroin
dealers, and Nicovic calls him a "major financial resource for the KLA."
Through his family links, Nicovic says, Kadriovski smuggled more than
100 kilos of heroin into New York and Philadelphia. He lived comfortably
in Istanbul and specialized in creative trafficking solutions, once
dispatching a shipment of heroin in the hollowed-out accordion cases of
a popular traveling Albanian folk music group. German authorities
eventually arrested him in 1985 with four kilos of heroin. They
confiscated his yachts, cars, and villas, and sent him to prison.
Kadriovski's reign appeared to be over.
But Kadriovski greased his way with narco-dollars. He escaped from
prison by bribing guards, and in 1993 he headed for the United States,
where it's believed he continues to operate. According to Nicovic,
Kadriovski reportedly funneled money to the KLA from New York through a
leading Kosovar businessman and declared KLA contributor. "Kadriovski
feels more secure with his KLA friends in power," Nicovic says.
The U.S. representatives of four other heroin families are suspected by
Interpol of having sent money for the uprising, according to Nicovic.
These men typically maintain links with local distributors, he says, and
move heroin through a network of small import-export companies in New
York and Philadelphia.
Now free of the war and the repressive Yugoslav police machine, drug
traffickers have reopened the old Balkan Road. With the KLA in power --
and in the spotlight -- the top trafficking families have begun to seek
relative respectability without decreasing their heroin shipments. "The
Kosovars are trying to position themselves in higher levels of
trafficking," says the U.N.'s Tony White. "They want to get away from
the violence of the streets and attract less attention. Criminals like
to move up like any other business, and the Kosovars are becoming
business leaders. They have become equal partners with the Turks."
Italian national police discovered this new Kosovar outreach last year
when they undertook "Operation Pristina." The carabinieri uncovered a
chain of connections that originated in Kosovo and stretched through
nine European countries, extending into Central Asia, South America, and
the United States.
"People from Pristina worked all over Europe and the world," says
JŸrgen Storbeck, director of Europol, the cooperative police force of
the European Union. "They used sophisticated methods, taking advantage
of places where police work was not so successful, like Eastern Europe."
Eventually, 40 people were arrested and 170 kilos of heroin were seized
in an operation that involved seven European police departments. As
their business reaches a saturation point in Europe, Kosovar traffickers
are looking more to the West. It's a smart business move. The United
States has seen a marked shift from cocaine to heroin use. According to
recent DEA statistics, Afghan heroin accounted for almost 20 percent of
the smack seized in this country -- nearly double the percentage taken
four years earlier. Much of it is distributed by Kosovar Albanians.
The Clinton administration has launched a vigorous crackdown on
Colombian heroin. As the campaign intensifies, some White House
officials fear Kosovar heroin could replace the Colombian supply. "Even
if we were to eliminate all the heroin production in Colombia, by no
means do we think there would be no more heroin coming into the United
States," says Bob Agresti of the White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy. "Look at the numbers. Colombia accounts for only six
percent of the world's heroin. Southwest Asia produces 75 percent."
Perhaps most alarmingly, Kosovar drug dealers associated with the KLA
have begun to form partnerships with Colombian traffickers -- the
world's most notorious drug lords. "We have an all-new situation now,"
says Europol's Storbeck. "Colombians like to use Kosovar groups for
distribution of cocaine. The Albanians are getting stronger and
stronger, and there is a certain job sharing now. They are used by Turks
for smuggling into the European Union and by Colombians for distribution
of cocaine."
Washington clearly hopes the KLA will disentangle itself from its
drug-running friends now that it's in power, but this may not be easy.
"The KLA owes a lot of debts to the traffickers and holy warriors," says
Koutouzis. "They are being pressured to assist other insurrections."
Already, the OGD has reports of KLA weapons being routed to the newest
Muslim holy war in Chechnya.
The congressional brief addresses the KLA's future: "One of the problems
you have with organizations that engage in drug trafficking is that they
become addicted to the trade and the income it brings," the report
notes. "Later on in life, even if they want to stop trafficking in
drugs, it's not always possible."
Marko Nicovic, the former Belgrade police chief, puts it a bit more
succinctly: "If Kosovo gets full autonomy, they may well double the
production of heroin," he says. "Kosovo will become a smuggler's
paradise, its doors open to every global criminal." The U.S. Foreign
Assistance Act of 1961 prohibits aid to any entity that has colluded
with narcotics traffickers. Similarly, the Balkan peace agreement
brokered in June prohibits the KLA from engaging in criminal activity.
And so the Clinton administration tries to steer clear of questions
suggesting the KLA has joined a rogues' gallery of narco-leaders. KLA
drug-running is the last thing the administration wants to tackle with
the success of its "moral war" already open to question.
Late last spring, Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) sent a letter to
President Clinton requesting an assessment of KLA drug trafficking. The
president responded quickly, telling Grassley in a June 15 letter that
he had demanded an intelligence assessment from the CIA and the DEA on
Kosovar drug trafficking. "Neither agency," the president wrote, "has
any intelligence that indicates the KLA has either been engaged in other
criminal activity or has direct links to any organized crime groups."
Clinton did acknowledge that crime groups "have contributed at least
limited funds and possibly small arms to the KLA." He promised to
"monitor" narcotics distribution there in the future. "There was no
action," said a congressional source close to Grassley. "It was a
nonanswer."
White House officials deny a whitewashing of KLA activities. "We do care
about [KLA drug trafficking]," says Agresti. "It's just that we've got
our hands full trying to bring peace there." The DEA is equally reticent
to address the issue. According to Michel Koutouzis, the DEA's website
once contained a section detailing Kosovar trafficking, but a week
before the U.S.-led bombings began, the section disappeared. "The DEA
doesn't want to talk publicly [about the KLA]," says OGD director Alain
Labrousse. "It's embarrassing to them." High-ranking U.S. officials are
dismayed that the KLA was installed in power without public discussion
or a thorough check of its background. "I don't think we're doing
anything there to stem the drugs," says a senior State Department
official. "It's out of control. It should be a high priority. We've
warned about it."
Even if it tried to stop Kosovar heroin, the U.S. would be hard-pressed
to do so. "Nobody's in control in Kosovo," adds the State Department
official. "They don't even have a police force." Regardless of what it
says, there's little indication that the administration wants to do
anything with the intelligence available about its newest ally. "There
is no doubt that the KLA is a major trafficking organization," said a
congressional expert who monitors the drug trade and requested
anonymity. "But we have a relationship with the KLA, and the
administration doesn't want to damage [its] reputation. We are partners.
The attitude is: The drugs are not coming here, so let others deal with
it."
That phrase is troublingly familiar. It raises the question: Is our
embrace of the KLA the latest in an ignoble tradition of aiding drug
traffickers for political reasons? Similar recipients of U.S. largesse
have included the Nicaraguan Contras, former Panamanian strongman Manuel
Noriega, the Afghan Taliban, and Burma's Khun Sa. Early in 1999, as the
war against Serbia raged, Congress voted to fund the KLA's drive for
independence. In the days ahead, our embrace of the KLA may come to
haunt us. Elections scheduled for this spring in Kosovo have been
delayed; but no matter when they occur, observers say, their outcome is
already certain. The time-honored clans will win. And the men in
oversized suits -- the kind who sing allegiance to democracy and global
capitalism while conducting business in the back of an unlicensed
Mercedes -- will be running the show.
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