KLA reassessed
In February 2008, a separatist campaign by the Kosovo Liberation Army ended in Kosovo’s unilateral sovereignty declaration. Most nations in the European Union promptly extended diplomatic recognition to Kosovo.
(Ilya Kharlamov, Voice of Russia) Saturday, January 08, 2011
But in the three years since, many have experienced something of a sobering effect. Indeed, what else to expect after many Kosovo leaders were exposed as massive embezzlers of European funds and kingpins of Europe-wide smuggling and drug trafficking rings?
A few weeks ago, a report by the Swiss delegate of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Dick Marty accused the former KLA commander and the current Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci of running illegal trade in human transplant material.
And earlier this week, the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo, or EULEX, accused the former KLA officers Sabit Geci and Riza Alija of committing war crimes during the Kosovo conflict, including mass arbitrary killings and torture.
The Russian Balkans expert Dr. Alexander Karasev explains why it is only now that Europe starts seeing the KLA as criminals:
Serbia and the Kosovo Serbs have been exposing the KLA all along. In more recent years, some of the former KLA leaders openly confessed to eliminating people who could testify against them at The Hague. Europe, however, continued to turn a blind eye to the criminal gang that was the KLA and its successors in Kosovo. It needed this gang to help it undermine and destroy Federal Yugoslavia.
Now that the need is over, the KLA are no longer cherished friends in European circles. The Kosovo Serbs, meantime, continue to suffer discrimination at the hands of separatists who fought for the KLA.
