25 Years Ago, NATO’s War on Yugoslavia: Kosovo “Freedom Fighters” Financed by Organized Crime

Almost Twenty-five years ago, marks the  beginning of NATO’s aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia (March 24, 1999- June 10, 1999). The bombings which lasted for almost three months, were followed by the military invasion (under a bogus UN mandate) and illegal occupation of  the province of Kosovo.

21 years later on April 24, 2020, the leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) Hashim Thaci who in the wake of the NATO-led war had become “Prime Minister” and subsequently “President” of Kosovo was indicted for crimes against humanity.

The Kosovo Specialist Prosecutor’s Office At The Hague filed an indictment against Hashim Thaci on April 24, 2020 ” for a range of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder, enforced disappearance of persons, persecution, and torture.”  

According to prosecutor Jack Smith, Thaci and his close allies “put their personal interests ahead of the victims of their crimes, the rule of law, and all people of Kosovo”. 

Nonsense: It took them 21  years to acknowledge the crimes committed by the KLA.

Those crimes were ordered by US-NATO. Hacim Thaci was and remains a US-NATO proxy. The KLA was supported by the CIA and Germany’s BND (Bundes Nachrichten Dienst).

In 1999 Thaci was on the Interpol list. The KLA was also supported by Al Qaeda.

Balkan Insight 

From the very outset those crimes against the people of Serbia and Kosovo were committed on behalf of the Atlantic Alliance. NATO’s war on Yugoslavia was based on the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P), their alleged “humanitarian” mandate through a bombing campaign (March 24 to June 10) was “to come to the rescue” of the people of Kosovo.

The KLA had extensive links to organized crime involved in drug trafficking. In the wake of the 1999 war, 25 years ago, a Mafia State was installed in Kosovo. The bombing of Yugoslavia ceased on June 10th.

On that same day 10, June 1999, the US decided to establish in Kosovo its US military base Camp Bondsteel which constitutes “the largest and the most expensive foreign military base built by the US in Europe, since the Vietnam War”.

And then all of sudden 21 years later, the Hague Prosecutor says that Hashim Thaci is  a “war criminal”. His links to NATO, the Pentagon and the US State Department (including Madeleine Albright) are simply not mentioned.

In 1999, while the bombings of Yugoslavia were ongoing, some of America’s “Left” including  Znet were supportive of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), pointing to their so-called Marxist-Leninist roots:

At present, the only armed force capable of defending the Kosovar Albanian villages that remain is the Kosova Liberation Army (KLA). Despite political shortcomings born of the state of lawlessness into which the 90% Albanian majority has been thrown over the last 10 years, since Milosevic abolished Kosova’s autonomy, the KLA last year managed to organise an army of up to 40,000 fighters.    …

For example, Stephen Shalom, in an article on ZNet states:

“I am sympathetic to the argument that says that if people want to fight for their rights, if they are not asking others to do it for them, then they ought to be provided with the weapons to help them succeed. Such an argument seemed to me persuasive with respect to Bosnia.”

In that same article, I was personally accused of having “discredited the KLA”:

“Michel Chossudovsky, a professor of economics at the University of Ottawa, has set out the most meticulous frame-up in a piece entitled “Freedom Fighters Financed by Organised Crime”, which has been doing the internet circuit. Full of half-truths, assumptions and innuendoes about the KLA’s alleged use of drug money, Chossudovsky’s article seeks to discredit the KLA as a genuine liberation movement representing the aspirations of the oppressed Albanian majority. …

Listen to the report of Democracy Now on the KLA and the alleged links to the Drug Trade (June 2, 1999) (which includes a representative of the KLA)

These so-called “half truths and innuendos” were the object of my article written in April 1999 at the height of the NATO bombings. entitled : Kosovo “Freedom Fighters” Financed by Organized Crime,  April 1999

With regard to the Indictment of Hashim Thaci.: He was “a paid killer” acting on behalf of his sponsors. The KLA led by Hashim Thaci was supported by NATO and the US military.

I should mention that this article was the object of extensive censorship.

The following article was written in early April. I should mention that it was the object of censorship by Le Monde diplomatique.

After a period of ten years of regular contributions to Le Monde diplo, that was the end of a longstanding relationship of exchange and friendship with Le Monde diplomatique.

The smoking gun was “Hashim Thaci” has a criminal record with Interpol”.  Had truth hit the headlines in 1999, the criminality of the US-NATO’s war would have been revealed from the very outset. 

Media disinformation had been prepared well in advance of March 1999:  “The Valley” was a documentary film which was produced  by Vaughan Smith in 1998 on behalf of NATO, with the support of the KLA, with fake images of the Serbian Armed Forces committing atrocities in Kosovo.

It was intent upon providing a human face to NATO, namely justifying the bombing of Yugoslavia on behalf of the KLA. “The Valley” was described as:

 “A journey deep into the killing fields of Kosovo, at the height of the carnage in September 1998 – months before NATO bombs fell”

Today my thoughts are with people of the former Yugoslavia, whose country was destroyed and dismantled by US-NATO. And that’s what they are doing today.

The 1999 NATO war was a Dress Rehearsal.  The destruction and fragmentation of sovereign nation states Worldwide is an integral part of US-NATO’s military agenda.

Michel Chossudovsky, March 18, 2024, January 30, 2025

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Kosovo “Freedom Fighters”

Financed by Organized Crime

Michel Chossudovsky

April 15, 1999

Heralded by the global media as a humanitarian peace-keeping mission, NATO’s ruthless bombing of Belgrade and Pristina goes far beyond the breach of international law. While Slobodan Milosevic is demonised, portrayed as a remorseless dictator, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) is upheld as a self-respecting nationalist movement struggling for the rights of ethnic Albanians. The truth of the matter is that the KLA is sustained by organised crime with the tacit approval of the United States and its allies.

Following a pattern set during the War in Bosnia, public opinion has been carefully misled. The multibillion dollar Balkans narcotics trade has played a crucial role in “financing the conflict” in Kosovo in accordance with Western economic, strategic and military objectives. Amply documented by European police files, acknowledged by numerous studies, the links of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) to criminal syndicates in Albania, Turkey and the European Union have been known to Western governments and intelligence agencies since the mid-1990s.

“…The financing of the Kosovo guerilla war poses critical questions and it sorely test claims of an “ethical” foreign policy. Should the West back a guerilla army that appears to partly financed by organised crime.” 1

While KLA leaders were shaking hands with US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at Rambouillet, Europol (the European Police Organization based in the Hague) was “preparing a report for European interior and justice ministers on a connection between the KLA and Albanian drug gangs.”2 In the meantime, the rebel army has been skilfully heralded by the global m

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Article from LewRockwell