Shiv Malik went into the Beeston ghetto in Leeds to do research for a BBC documentary on the lives of the four 7/7 bombers, 3 of whom were from Beeston. What he found was a self-isolated Pakistani community in which a large proportion of the secondg eneration, having become alienated from the traditionalism of their parents, but unable to integrate into British society, found a spiritual home in the transnational Islamist movement of the Salafi-Jihadists.

After months of digging around and still unable to find anyone willing to honestly talk to him Shiv found out about Khan’s cabbie brother and took a couple of cab rides with him. Then finally more information was forthcoming from other sources and Shiv was able to piece together the story of Khan’s gradual radicalisation that finally led him to become a suicide bomber.

Serious problems started in Beeston some ten year ago, when the whole neighbourhood became increasingly infested with drugs. The community did not know how to deal with it. Then a group of second-generation Pakistanis emerged, known as the Mullah boys, who became a vigilante community work squad. They would forcibly take drug-addicted Pakistani youths off the street and detox them. Mohammad Sidique Khan was a part of this group and was looked up to in the community. But as the group’s religiousity increased so did their militancy. Meanwhile Khan came into conflict with his family over his Salafism and his choice of girlfriend, who was from a different sect (she was Deobandi, which is similar to Wahhabism, while his family was Berelvi, which is a type of Sufism). Read the rest of this disturbing story here.

You probably won’t be surprised to know, by the way, the documentary was never made. The BBC deemed the script to be too “Anti-Muslim”. Reality has become too anti-Muslim to talk about in Britain.

One other random fact that jumped out at me in the article:

Among those who study British race relations, there’s an informal theory that states that 30 years after the establishment of any sizeable ethnic minority community, there will be riots.

I wonder how the theory translates to other countries? The last 10 years has seen a level of migration all over the world unprecedented in human history, particularly into the First World. And 20-30 years from now will coincide with the West’s catastrophic demographic slump, which is likely to decimate a number of Western economies. I think Europe in particular is going to be seeing bigger trouble than just riots.

The grateful citizens of Kosovo are on their best behavior as the legitimization of their criminal “state” draws ever closer, writes Rebecca Thornton for Prospect magazine:

The UN has so far succeeded in maintaining relative peace within the province, but it is a peace built on black-market economics and organised crime. Kosovo might well be, along with its cousin Albania, the most criminalised place on earth. Evidence of criminal activity dominates the landscape of the province. Black-market trading goes on flagrantly in every town and city. The filthy roads are lined with new petrol stations, which the Kosovo Liberation Army uses for money laundering.

Since the end of the conflict in 1999, the province has seen spectacular rises in drugs, arms and people trafficking. Kosovar Albanians import 80 per cent of Europe’s heroin, worth up to £12bn a year. Meanwhile, a recent Save the Children report observed an alarming rise in the number of minors trafficked into Kosovo.

In July 2006, an email from Unmik’s chief security officer, which I have seen, informed all staff “that a number of establishments in Kosovo use what appears to be a legitimate front to further illegal activities such as prostitution. We as Unmik officers CANNOT be seen as condoning these activities.” According to Amnesty International, the Unmik personnel presence has boosted the demand for prostitution. Kate Allen, director of UK Amnesty, says, “Women and girls as young as 11 are being sold into sexual slavery in Kosovo and international peacekeepers are… fuelling this despicable trade by themselves paying for sex from trafficked women.”

A founder of Koha Ditore, a Kosovar Albanian daily newspaper, tells me, “The government is doing nothing. Drugs, rackets, prostitution—the criminals co-operate very well, regardless of ethnic background. The international community is not doing enough to fight organised crime. They like to say ‘We’ve fulfilled our mandate,’ but if you scratch beneath the surface… I never dare write anything about organised crime. If I touch this issue, then my chance is, at best, to live two hours more.”

Seven years of UN rule has done little to facilitate any kind of relationship between the Kosovar Albanians and the Serbs. The change of atmosphere in the north of the country, where the Serbs are concentrated, is visible; and in the south, the crisp I LOVE USA posters that were once tacked to the rusty railings are nowhere to be seen. The tensions are symbolised by the Mitrovica bridge, which both physically joins and spiritually divides the Serb heartlands north of the Ibar from the Albanian regions to the south. I recently attended “Zadusnice,” a Serb commemoration day for the dead. At a graveyard south of the bridge, on the majority Albanian side, mourning Serbs are escorted by troops with armoured vehicles from Mitrovica, north of the bridge. The families are given one hour to visit the desecrated tombstones of their relatives, rubbish-strewn monuments that have been broken into heaps of dirty stone, surrounded by piles of litter and cigarette butts. Most of the visitors fall to their knees immediately, spending their allotted hour trying to clean the graves. As a man pulled jerkily at the grass at his wife’s tombstone, he said, “I can’t come to my wife’s grave when I want to. When I do come I have to be escorted. This situation is all too cruel to be civilised.”

Aww, they’ve taken down the I LOVE USA posters? But have they started replacing them with posters of their good friend Uncle Benny yet?

I do like the way Rebecca ends her article:

“Kosovo” is Serbo-Croat for “crow.” The creatures are everywhere here, swarms of them, with squawks reverberating off the detritus of years of war and desultory nation-building, reminding one of the collective noun for this symbol of Kosovo’s identity: murder.

And how is it possible that the Europeans are allowing all this to happen in the own backyard? Hmm:

   During a February mission to Brussels led by Kosovo Bishop Artemije, after getting the usual empty assurances that there will be guarantees of human rights and protections for Kosovo’s Serb minority, American Council for Kosovo director Jim Jatras asked a Hungarian member of the European parliament, “Isn’t all this talk of protections for Serbs a tacit admission that among the Kosovo Albanians are a lot of violent and intolerant people? Why would you reward their violence with state power?”

   Looking Jatras in the eye, the parliamentarian replied, “Because we’re afraid of them.”

My previous posts on the developing situations(s) in the Balkans here.

Lisa Reitman-Dobi quizzed some 15 year olds at her daughter’s school about a video game they play, with the objective of making money from drug trafficking:

“You start off indebted to this Mafia guy, I mean he has an Italian accent, and he always asks, ‘Where’s my money?’ And he like f–ks you up if you don’t give it to him. In the beginning, however high your debt is, this is what you pay. Your debt also goes up as you move around. You can fly places but that’s more expensive. So I don’t do that. You start out with $5,500 debt and $2,000 spending money. You want to deal the higher quality drugs. You make more money that way. Ultimately you want to deal coke, because it’s most expensive.”

[..]

“You’re going to quote me, I know it. But I guess people want to read negative things the same way kids want to do negative things…I mean, we’re supposed to, like, detach from parents and all, right? But just so you know, I never buy heroin. It’s against my, like, policy. I have good values from, like, my parents and stuff.”

Lets hear about ‘em values when you’re a hundred grand down and there’s a gun to your head. With an Italian accent.

Drug and human trafficking in Kosovo and Albania:

[..]
As far as Albania is concerned “We do not talk in kilos any more but in tonnes of drugs,” a senior Western diplomat in Tirana told Irish Times in July of 2006.

“Albania is like a big drugs warehouse,” the diplomat concluded.

Statistics speak for themselves: 19,500 Kosovo Albanians are clogging German jails for selling drugs; 2,500 Kosovo Albanians are in Swiss jail for selling drugs; Hungarian anti-mafia chief Djerd Hološi says Albanians control 80% of Hungarian drugs; Czech’s attribute 70% of drug distribution to Kosovo Albanians… the Azuri coast in Spain is controlled by Kosovo Albanian Mafia…

The Franchises

The village of Veliki Trnovac was once all Christian when a family of Muslim Albanians were sold a Serb property to and by now, the village has no recollection of ever being Christian, other then dilapidated church stones no Muslim Albanian pays any attention to.

With an armed Muslim Albanian force of 15,000, Veliki Trnovac is a fortress, impossible to enter unless a sustained military campaign is organized in order to bust the drug warehouses that are spread across the village. Serbian military is under orders not to enter the village to take down the Albanian drug lords because the West will interpret this law enforcement action as an ethnic attack against Albanians.

Some say that Veliki Trnovac is protected by Western political correctness, but whatever the case, the Muslim drug entrepreneurs of Veliki Trnovac have, in the true spirit of capitalist labor division, split their activities along the clan lines: the Fis, or Muslim Albanian clans that run the heroin trade are Osmani, Halili and Bunjako while human traffic, especially the lucrative sex slavery of women, is run by Albanian Muslim fis of Morina and Keljemendi.
[..]
“Albanian mafia is essentially what we can loosely call the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) although it now goes by various names,” writes Gregory Copley from the Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis. “KLA exists, and is able to access much of its narcotic product, because of its close interrelationship with jihadist movements and foreign state sponsors,” writes Copley.

Europol Annual Report for 2005 similarly states that the Albanian organized crime is related to the Islamic terrorism where the Brussells based “Bureau also cooperated in other operations, investigating the dismantling of OC groups that are known for suspicious financial transactions, Albanian organised crime, producing synthetic drugs and related to Islamic terrorism.”
[..]

And lets not forget the weapons. The rocket-propelled grenade fired at the US Embassy by leftist nutjobs in Greece in January arrived in Greece via Kosovo:

Kosovo link to embassy strike

The missile fired at the US Embassy by Revolutionary Struggle last month reached Greece via Kosovo, police sources told Kathimerini yesterday in what authorities believe is a breakthrough in their investigation.

Greek and US security agents have discovered that the rocket-propelled grenade was removed from an army warehouse in Albania in 1994 and taken to Kosovo, where it came into the possession of an arms smuggler.

Authorities believe that the arms trader held on to the weapon until 2001 and they are investigating his contacts and dealings in the hope they will find out who smuggled the rocket into Greece.

A high-ranking police source said that officers had contacted foreign security services to obtain more information and they hope their investigation will develop further this week.

No member of Revolutionary Struggle, the leftist group which claimed the embassy attack, has been caught since the organization became active in 2003.

Guess this country.

It’s army, under the command of the ruling regime, is engaging in a campaign of genocide against racial and religious minorities, often beheading, raping and torturing its victims, but it is not the Sudan.

Children as young as 12 are being forcefully recruited into this army, but this is not the Taliban in Afghanistan or “Saddam’s Lion Cubs” in Hussein’s Iraq.

The military regime is busily building bunkers in a strongpoint defence matrix, allegedly in anticipation of a US attack, but it is not Iran.

This country is removing any crosses or other Christian symbols from public spaces, bit it is not Algeria.

This country has the world’s largest narcotics-trafficking militia operating on its territory, but it is not Columbia.

This country has a health crisis worse than the poorest areas of Africa, with more children dying before age 5 in some areas, than the Congo, but it is not Afghanistan.

This country has recently agreed to allow Russia to share in exploitation of its oil fields, in exchange for weapons shipments, but it is not Venezuela.

This country, while shunned by the West, counts China as its main political and economic ally, but it is not North Korea.

While the world’s attention is focused on several noisy ideologically and religiously driven nutjob regimes, one old backyard hussler is slowly but surely losing touch with reality, seemingly by way of good old fashioned drug-induced psychosis. That twitchy little battler is Burma.

“The side road the soldiers have blocked off is 15 kilometers (9 miles) north of the city of Pyinmana in the central Burmese plains. The jungle stretches for more than 400 kilometers (249 miles), like some vast, green carpet, toward a line of jagged peaks on the distant horizon marking the Golden Triangle bordering Laos and Thailand. The only destination worth seeing in this rural stretch of Burma is its tropical rainforest research institute.

But Burma’s ruling generals recently declared the region a restricted military zone, making the trip to the institute off-limits to outsiders. The Junta is having its new capital built somewhere at the end of this 20-foot-wide highway. The central government’s officials were already required to move there last November.

..

Burma’s leadership apparently plans to barricade itself into its remote new capital, from which it expects to control the country in the future. The nearest major city, Mandalay, is a 250-kilometer (155-mile) journey away on a deeply potholed road, and the trip to Rangoon takes about eight hours. Naypyidaw, or “Royal Country,” is the name Than Shwe, the junta’s 73-year-old leader, has personally selected for his government’s secretive new headquarters. According to official instructions to be followed in the event of a foreign attack, “Naypyidaw is our war bunker, where we will wait, during an American attack, until the Chinese hurry to our aid.”

Sounds like a brilliant plan. Although, considering the pace of events in Iraq and throwing in some generous estimates for the actions against Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and Trans-dnestr my estimated date of invasion is somewhere around hmmm.. how does 2090 sound? By which date you won’t need to wait long for China to help, because you’ll be a part of it.

So what the hell is going here? Well, I did mention drug-induced psychosis, didn’t I?

“Beheadings by troops are common. So too are beatings, the use of forced labour and rape. Growing use of amphetamines among Burma’s 400,000-strong army is fuelling this violence.

A narcotics expert from the Australian National University who is based in Thailand, David Matheson, said researchers had concluded that many troops went into battle high on amphetamines. “When they come across dead Burmese soldiers, they find methamphetamine tablets on most of them if not all of them, particularly in the Shan state.”

The brutality of the attacks is evident in video footage, taken by members of the evangelical Christian missionary group the Free Burma Rangers, of the burning of villages. The video shows young men, armed with AK-47 rifles, setting fire to bamboo homes as residents flee in terror.”

Lets put two and 400,000 together here. “Most if not all” of the military is marching to the rhythm of an ICE binge, and its leadership is barricading itself away from the world in the middle of the jungle, declaring their new place of residence “Royal County”. Add the delusion and paranoia up with the erratic acts of violence, and this is obviously one hell of a tweak out. And it is sure to be followed by one hell of a come down, yet oddly enough “Royal County” just doesn’t sound like a rehab centre to me.

But I propose a solution. Send in the bicycles. That should keep them busy for at least a couple of decades. Heck, maybe after that we can arrange for them to sort through the world’s garbage for recycling, and get on top of that global warming biznit too. Hey, its far more likely to have an effect than another UN Resolution.