Adam's Apple
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- Apr 25, 2004
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A Balkan Base for Al Qaeda?
By Julia Gorin, Front Page Magazine
March 20, 2006
The War on Terror suffered a major blow three years before it was ever announced. It happened when the people of this democracy were misled into attacking the sovereign, emerging post-Communist democracy of Yugoslavia--over rumors of genocide and ethnic cleansing that proved false. In so doing, we put the final touch on delivering the Balkans to al Qaeda.
Today we are being asked to seal that historical blunder, whose repercussions seven years later are only escalating as those we rescued turn their weapons against UN and NATO forces. While NATO spends most of its time rooting out terror cells in Kosovo and Bosniawhich served as the logistics bases for the London and Madrid bombings--the 2006 deadline to complete our eagerly forgotten debacle and determine the provinces final status is fast approaching. To persuade the international community that only one final status will be acceptable, our Albanian "rescuees" have been stepping up the violence, a message to the West that it has only one possible exit strategy: grant unconditional independence--without border compromises with Serbia and without protection guarantees for whats left of the non-Albanian minorities.
If we allow this to happen, the peacekeepers will have to leave, and with them our eyes and ears in this terror haven and thruway. Still, congressional, State Department and UN sentiment seems to be tilting toward self-determination and the logic that if youve dug yourself into a hole, keep digging.
Here is the size of that hole so far: In November, 2001, what should have been an explosive article appeared in the European edition of the Wall St. Journal. Headlined Al Qaedas Balkan Links, it read: For the past 10 years Ayman al-Zawahiri [bin Ladens second in command] has operated terrorist training camps [and] weapons of mass destruction factories throughout Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Bosnia Though the Clinton administration had been briefed extensively by the State Department in 1993 on the growing Islamist threat in former Yugoslavia, little was done to follow through .
Nor did a December 2003 article in Britains Sunday Mirror register a blip: Posing as members of the Real IRA, we made our deal in Kosovo, a breeding ground for fanatics with al-Qaeda links. Our contact was the deputy commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army Niam Behljulji, known as Hulji Hulji is said to supply terrorists across Europe and has been accused of massacring Serbian women and children during the war. He even posed grinning for a photograph, holding the severed head of one of his victims Hulji said: The plastics (Semtex) is the old type. No metal strips inside. It cannot be detected at airports.
Hulji, according to the December issue of the Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy journal, is the man who supplied the Semtex-like explosives used in the London and Madrid attacks.
for full article:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21712
By Julia Gorin, Front Page Magazine
March 20, 2006
The War on Terror suffered a major blow three years before it was ever announced. It happened when the people of this democracy were misled into attacking the sovereign, emerging post-Communist democracy of Yugoslavia--over rumors of genocide and ethnic cleansing that proved false. In so doing, we put the final touch on delivering the Balkans to al Qaeda.
Today we are being asked to seal that historical blunder, whose repercussions seven years later are only escalating as those we rescued turn their weapons against UN and NATO forces. While NATO spends most of its time rooting out terror cells in Kosovo and Bosniawhich served as the logistics bases for the London and Madrid bombings--the 2006 deadline to complete our eagerly forgotten debacle and determine the provinces final status is fast approaching. To persuade the international community that only one final status will be acceptable, our Albanian "rescuees" have been stepping up the violence, a message to the West that it has only one possible exit strategy: grant unconditional independence--without border compromises with Serbia and without protection guarantees for whats left of the non-Albanian minorities.
If we allow this to happen, the peacekeepers will have to leave, and with them our eyes and ears in this terror haven and thruway. Still, congressional, State Department and UN sentiment seems to be tilting toward self-determination and the logic that if youve dug yourself into a hole, keep digging.
Here is the size of that hole so far: In November, 2001, what should have been an explosive article appeared in the European edition of the Wall St. Journal. Headlined Al Qaedas Balkan Links, it read: For the past 10 years Ayman al-Zawahiri [bin Ladens second in command] has operated terrorist training camps [and] weapons of mass destruction factories throughout Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Bosnia Though the Clinton administration had been briefed extensively by the State Department in 1993 on the growing Islamist threat in former Yugoslavia, little was done to follow through .
Nor did a December 2003 article in Britains Sunday Mirror register a blip: Posing as members of the Real IRA, we made our deal in Kosovo, a breeding ground for fanatics with al-Qaeda links. Our contact was the deputy commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army Niam Behljulji, known as Hulji Hulji is said to supply terrorists across Europe and has been accused of massacring Serbian women and children during the war. He even posed grinning for a photograph, holding the severed head of one of his victims Hulji said: The plastics (Semtex) is the old type. No metal strips inside. It cannot be detected at airports.
Hulji, according to the December issue of the Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy journal, is the man who supplied the Semtex-like explosives used in the London and Madrid attacks.
for full article:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21712
