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.

Further to this post a couple of days ago, here’s a must read article on the spread of the now-inextractable Wahhabi cancer in Bosnia.

Extract from “Emissaries of Militant Islam Make Headway in Bosnia”:

[Ex-Wahhabi] Nermina said the Wahhabi sect had infiltrated schools, universities and the media. They know most of the population dislikes them and have therefore adapted their outward appearance in order to enter public institutions, she claimed.

Nermina also told Balkan Insight she had been trapped in her house for almost three of the five years she wore a hijab. The men and women in the house were separated and all visitors had to comply with the rules.

“I believed that men were preordained to run public life while it was our duty to stay in the house,” she said. “Rare gatherings were our only contact with the outside world. Over the summer, we took trips to special camps near Lake Jablanica where women were also separated from men.

“We had a parallel world that others may not have noticed. We had our own public transport and grocery stores. We migrated inwards into our own closed sphere.”

Polygamy, which is illegal in Bosnia, was encouraged, she went on. “I know women whose husbands have several other wives,” she said. “They told us we would be rewarded in the next world if we put up with this hardship and refrained from being jealous. They keep talking about the next world to scare you, and promise you’ll go to heaven if you obey.”

At the same time, Nermina realised she increasingly disliked Wahhabism. She started getting out of the house and communicating with people. But when wearing the hijab, it was difficult to reach out. “People in Sarajevo are hostile towards Wahhabis and veiled women. It is impossible to get a job or even talk to anybody,” she said.

Eventually, her plight forced her to reconsider her beliefs and whole way of life. “I met a fellow Muslim woman who studied Islamic sciences,” she recalled.

“At first I treated her as an infidel, as she veiled only her hair while leaving her neck and ears exposed, which Wahhabism regards as a deadly sin,” she went on.

“But watching her and learning what a beautiful religion Islam is, I realised that everything I had learnt from the Wahhabi was wrong. My conversations with this woman brought up many crucial questions in my head. One of them was about polygamy, which I believed in wholeheartedly.

“She asked me why men shouldn’t put up with being cheated on to get their reward in the other world if women were being asked to do the same. It was a logical question but one I had never heard before.”

Professor Hafizovic believes the authorities ought to take immediate action. “I keep getting calls from parents whose children have been taken away by the Wahhabi; they are begging me to help them,” he said.

“The Wahhabi train these young people to break their own families into pieces and introduce their propaganda through literature and camps. There is nothing I can do to stop it but I hereby appeal to the authorities in this country to speak out,” Hafizovic told Balkan Insight.

Jasmin Merdan also said immediate steps were needed. “Decisive action needs to be taken, primarily by the Islamic Community and the authorities through cooperation with international institutions,” he said. “But it should rest on the Islamic Community first and foremost because destroying traditional Islam in Bosnia is the basic Wahhabi objective, just as it would be in any other country,” he added.

Read the whole thing.

While I’m at it, some articles on the developing Kosovo situation too:

“Creating a state of denial”

“Europe’s approaching train wreck”

“Report damns West’s revival of Kosovo”

A couple of stories from The Australian:

“Extremist students take over Newcastle mosque”:

Up to 150 university students from Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Egypt who follow the fundamentalist Wahabbism ideology were central to the overthrow at the weekend of the executive board of the Newcastle Muslim Association.

Deposed association president Yunus Kara yesterday accused the students of pushing for new leadership of the port city’s mosque in order to advance their own extremist agenda and continue “brainwashing” local Muslims.

“The international students have used their puppets to come forward and dictate,” Mr Kara told The Australian.

“They’re driving them to whatever ideology that (suits them). Their ideology is extremism … but they teach under the banner of Islam.”

“Taxation office to probe Muslim cleric on Saudi cash”:

An ACT Islamic organisation has also accused the Palestinian-born imam Mohammad Swaiti of being “radical”, anti-Western in his religious teachings, and failing to declare payments he received from officiating at wedding ceremonies.

Documents obtained by The Australian reveal an Australian Tax Office investigation into Sheik Swaiti over allegations by senior Muslim community leaders that he failed to declare his clerical allowances of up to $US30,000 ($37,700) a year, which were paid to him by the Saudi Government.

The tax office sent Islamic Society of ACT president Sabrija Poskovic a letter in reply to written allegations made by him and his community regarding Sheik Swaiti.

“I refer to your letter relating to the imam of your mosque, Mohammad Swaiti, who also happens to be a tax office employee,” the ATO’s letter to Mr Poskovic says.

[..]

Mr Poskovic accused the Saudi Embassy of bankrolling the annual salaries of up to 20 imams around Australia, including Sheik Swaiti, through its Islamic donations (Daawa) office.

A letter understood to be sent on behalf of Mr Poskovic claims the Saudis pay the imams “mukafa”, which is regarded a “reward compensation payment”. It also alleges that Sheik Swaiti had been on the Saudi payroll for 12 years.

Are parts of Australia heading the way of some cities in Europe, like Antwerp, where the Saudi-sponsored radical Salafists/Wahhabists have taken over all 25 mosques? On a bigger scale, just watch what is happening in Kosovo, where the Wahhabis have sponsored about 200 mosques and religious schools since 1999:

Wahhabis open internet cafes associated with their mosques, “in a bid to attract children to listen to ‘naslihates’ against Skenderbeg and the Albanian national renewal movement, the Western civilization and even Kosovo’s traditional brand of Islam,” the media report.

The newspapers in Priština also say that “Kosovo and international mujahedins may be preparing for a rebellion on the brink of the status solution,”

Or look at the growing influence of the Wahhabis in Bosnia, . Rather predictably, in both places a growing section of the Muslim population is growing increasingly radicalised. Lets not be going in that direction.

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.

Thats me, apparently.

So what would happen if a war was called and nobody came? Forty eight hours since the gauntlet throw-down and the total number of hits deployed against TOD via the Tinfoil Soldier’s outpost of militant Idiotism: 0.

I disagree with Socialism, so I mock it. Kip here disagrees with Libertarianism, so he has a tourette’s episode and declares a war. Not because Libertarians are “wrong”, though, but because Libertarianism is “a deluded and horrible ideology” (but not wrong!) and Libertarians are “c#nts”. Go figure. Perhaps a war on C#ntism would have been more appropriate?

Is he a lead soldered tin soldier, perhaps? That would at least explain his statement that “the problem with the terrorists and the Muslims is a poisonous soup with leftovers from just about every international disaster of the last 200 years”. This little ‘terrorists-as-victims’ insight also gives him away as a closet Socialist, which would explain the hissy fit. What it doesn’t explain is what gave me away as a Libertarian, considering I’ve never used the term on this site. Communist and c#nt, I can understand. But Libertarian? I can only blame the lead poisoning. A soup of it.

In other comment shenanigans last week:

John asks:

And how much is the Serbian government paying you two [thats me and Julia Gorin] to spread propaganda?

Not as much as the Illuminati do to spread theirs, pal, but thanks for asking. The Vast Right-wing Conspiracy doesn’t fund itself, you know. Memo to Belgrade: send guns and money, I am under attack!

Finally, a young Muslim fella called Ibrahim trots out that silly old “monotheism” argument against Christianity:

Your comment regarding the trinity being too hard for the Prophet to understand are quite accurate- not a single person on this planet could make 3 things add upto 1. besides even the bible doesnt support it.

Sorry, but who’s adding? Is it that hard to get the concept of 3 aspects of the one? Do “mind, body and soul” add up to 3 people?

Everything in the world has the same three aspects - substance, form and purpose. So does God. No surprise there. If an electron can be both a particle and a wave at the same time, I think God can pull off this Trinity thing. Muslims claim Allah is “unknowable” than whine that the Christian Trinity cannot be understood. Look, if you can convince yourself that there is science in the Koran, than sure as raisins you can grasp this Triune God business. Its not that hard. Think of it as Quantum Theology. By “Koran science” logic Quantum Mechanics is predicted in the Bible, which by the way does too support the Trinity:

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,… (Matthew 28:19)

I believe St Augustine described it quite well when he used the analogy of love that involves a lover, the loved one and a spirit of love between them.

For further explanation go here and here.

What I’d love to hear is an explanation of how on Earth Muhammed came to the conclusion that the Trinity consists of God, Mary and Jesus (see Suras 5:119, 4:171 and 5:75-76).
Hardly puts him (or his followers) in a position of authority from which to criticise Christianity.

From the editorial “Iraq situation resembles Yugoslavia of early 1990s”, by Max Boot, LA Times:

Today, only the U.S. troop presence is preventing Iraq, already in the throes of a low-level civil war, from degenerating into an all-out conflict a la Yugoslavia. The likely effect of such a bloodletting is spelled out in a recent report, “Things Fall Apart,” by Brookings Institution fellows Daniel Byman and Kenneth Pollack. They examined recent civil wars not only in Yugoslavia but in Afghanistan, Congo, Lebanon, Chechnya, Nagorno-Karabakh, Somalia and Tajikistan. “We found,” they write, “that ’spillover’ is common in massive civil wars” and “that while its intensity can vary considerably, at its worst it can have truly catastrophic effects.”

They cite six such effects, beyond the obvious humanitarian nightmare.

First, a massive exodus of refugees, “large groupings of embittered people who serve as a ready recruiting pool for armed groups still waging the civil war.” For example, Palestinian refugees sparked conflicts in Jordan in 1970-71 and in Lebanon from 1975 to 1990.

Second, states in civil war can provide a haven for existing terrorist groups (Al Qaeda in Afghanistan) or create new ones (Hezbollah in Lebanon).

Third, civil wars often radicalize neighboring populations. For instance, the Rwanda genocide in the mid-1990s sparked a civil war in Congo, which has led to an estimated 4 million deaths.

Fourth, “secession breeds secessionism,” as in Yugoslavia.

Fifth, there are huge economic losses.

Finally, Byman and Pollack write, “the problems created by these other forms of spillover often provoke neighboring states to intervene — to stop terrorism as Israel tried repeatedly in Lebanon, to halt the flow of refugees as the Europeans tried in Yugoslavia, or to end (or respond to) the radicalization of their own population as Syria did in Lebanon…. The result is that many civil wars become regional wars.”

As Byman and Pollack note, “Iraq has all the earmarks of creating quite severe spillover problems.” This is, after all, a state with something worth fighting for (oil), and one where all the major combatants (various Sunni, Shiite and Kurd groups) are amply represented in neighboring countries. Iraq’s potential as a breeding ground for terrorism is even greater than Lebanon’s or Afghanistan’s.

Thats six more reasons why the troops must stay in Iraq.

Mark Stein seems to think he knows what the Norwegians are doing in Afghanistan:

And these days troops is something of an elastic term, too. In Norwegian, it means “fighting men who are prepared to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Americans, as long as they don’t have to do any fighting and there are at least two provinces between their shoulders and the American ones”. That’s to say, Norway is “participating” in Afghanistan, but, because its troops are “not sufficiently trained to take part in combat”, they’ve been mainly back at the barracks manning the photocopier or staging amateur performances of Peer Gynt for the amusement of US special forces who like nothing better than to unwind with five acts of Ibsen after a hard day hunting the Taliban.

Alas, even being in the general vicinity of regions where fighting is taking place got a little too much so the Norwegians demanded a modification of their rules of non-engagement and insisted their “soldiers” be moved to parts of Afghanistan where there’s no fighting whatsoever by anyone at all. Good luck finding any.

No, Mark. Their mission is something far more sinister. Oh, they are trained alright. Here’s the real reason why the Norwegians are stationed two provinces away from the Americans:

“We never really know what happens after we go. Tough luck for Kosovo.
Croatia, Albania, somewhere near Romania. Its Euro and Nato, why the hell did we go…
We’ll kick their ass and then we’ll see how it goes… and then, we really don’t know - that sucks for Kosovo.”

Still on the Balkans, Albanian blackmail shows no sign of abating either. When you’re on a good thing, stick with it, I guess.

Cautioned? Sounds more like a threat to me:

ROME — Any attempt by the international community to deny Kosovo independence will set off “a new Balkan war,” a senior Kosovar negotiator cautioned yesterday.

[..]

Some international diplomats have speculated that a watered-down version of [U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari’s] proposals may be adopted by the U.N. Security Council, which would lessen the degree of Kosovo’s de facto independence.

“If you want to see a new Balkan war, that is the perfect scenario,” said [negotiator Ylber] Hasa, who wrangled for years with Serbian delegates over the future of Serbian cultural sites and monuments in Kosovo.

And just to show they are serious:

In the latest incident, an explosion damaged three U.N. vehicles in Kosovo’s capital yesterday, causing no injuries but raising tensions in the disputed province.

And here’s another one for the Reuter’s Oddly Section - some odd reporting from The Times Online:

It is eight years since Nato halted Slobodan Milosevic’s persecution of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians, in an onslaught that emptied and torched villages, killed about 100,000 and forced almost a million to flee. Returning Albanians turned on their persecutors, killing 1,000 Kosovan Serbs; 200,000 left the province, never to return.

Don’t be shy with the rounding now!

100,000 Albanians where killed? Is that from a Lancet study, perhaps? Nope:

A study by The Lancet (PDF), Vol 355, 24 June 2000, estimated “12,000 (95% CI 5500 18 300) deaths in the total population.”

Out by a factor of 10, which ever source you use (and four days later still no correction).

And then?

The most immediate problem — the refugees — was largely resolved very quickly: within three weeks, over 500,000 Albanian refugees had returned home. By November 1999, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 808,913 out of 848,100 had returned.

However, much of the remaining Serb population of Kosovo fled fearing revenge attacks. Gypsies, Turks and Bosniaks were also driven out after being brutalized by Albanians. The Yugoslav Red Cross had registered 247,391 mostly Serbian refugees by November. The new exodus was a severe embarrassment to NATO, which had established a peacekeeping force of 45,000 under the auspices of the United Nations Mission In Kosovo (UNMIK). According to Amnesty International, the presence of peacekeepers in Kosovo led to an increase in the trafficking of women for sexual exploitation. [27] [28]

Most seriously, as many as 1,000 Serbs and Roma have been murdered or have gone missing since June 12, 1999. Criminal gangs or vengeful individuals may have been involved in some incidents since the war, but elements of the KLA are clearly responsible for many of these crimes. [29]

The Croats’ sweet love affair with Hitler just keeps on keeping on:

ZAGREB (Reuters) - Small packets of sugar bearing the likeness of Adolf Hitler and carrying Holocaust jokes have been found in some cafes in Croatia, prompting an investigation, the office of the state prosecutor said Monday.

“The local district attorney in (the eastern town of) Pozega has opened an investigation and is currently looking at the matter,” said Martina Mihordin.

The Novi List daily newspaper reported that officials at a small factory in Pozega have confirmed the sugar packs were produced on their premises.

Croatia’s Ustasha regime sided with the Nazis in World War Two and enforced ethnic laws under which thousands of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies, as well as anti-fascist Croats, were killed in local concentration camps in 1941-45.

[..]

Note that Reuters placed this article in the Oddly Enough section. Not real news, apparently. Just an anomaly. Can’t get our head around it, so we’ll just chuck it in with the salacious sex trivia and chuckle-worthy animal deformities.

See this previous post for the background on Croatia’s nostalgia for Nazism, containing the following (and much more along similar lines) from an article by Julia Gorin:

In 1998, NY Times columnist A.M. Rosenthal wrote: “In World War II, Hitler had no executioners more willing, no ally more passionate, than the fascists of Croatia. They are returning, 50 years later, from what should have been their eternal grave, the defeat of Nazi Germany. The Western Allies who dug that grave with the bodies of their servicemen have the power to stop them, but do not.”

[..]

In an article titled “Pro-Nazi extremism lingers in Croatia,” the Washington Times in 1997 reported: “A German tank rolls through a small village, and the peasants rush out, lining the road with their right arms raised in a Nazi salute as they chant ‘Heil Hitler.’ Mobs chase minorities from their homes, kicking them and pelting them with eggs as they flee into the woods. Europe in the 1940s? No. Croatia in the 1990s.”

In 1995, the London Evening Standard’s Edward Pearce wrote that “you can understand Croatia best by saying flatly that if there is one place in the world where a statue of Adolph Hitler would be revered, it would be in Zagreb.”

UPDATE (22/2): Julia Gorin has this photograph of one of the packets of sugar and a translated joke, via Mickey from serbianna.com:

Hitler comes to the Jews and says, “I’ll play you a record!”
Jews: “Which one?”
Hitler: “Concrete!!!”

The joke for Croats here is supposed to be with the word ‘record’, because the word “PLOCA” in Croatian has a double meaning: one a record (as in LP), which is what is SAID in the saying, and the other, a TABLET, something you put on a grave, which is what is MEANT by the saying.

From an opinion piece by Serge/Srdja Trifkovic, on the topic of the ongoing negotiations on the status of Kosovo:

[..] the untold news is that Kosovo will not become independent. The New York Times, the Washington Post and the rest of the Western “mainstream” will go on huffing and puffing and pretending otherwise, but there is not much they can do: Kostunica will not be duped, Serbia will not cave in, Russia will not relent, and the Albanians will not give up on what they had been promised by those who had never had the right to make the promise in the first place. They threaten renewed violence, but the threat only serves to reinforce the argument that they should not be allowed to get away with it. As Russia’s ambassador to the U.N. told his Western colleagues last Wednesday, “you may be willing to give in to Albanian blackmail, but we are not.”

Unfortunately there is plenty of other blackmail the UN and the EU can give in to unimpeded.