Kosovo Albanian Power Struggles and Attendant Factors Overwhelm UNMIK Capacities as Major Violence Looms

Kosovo Albanian Power Struggles and Attendant Factors Overwhelm UNMIK Capacities as Major Violence Looms
Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis - February 28, 2007, Wednesday

Analysis. By Valentine Spyroglou, GIS South-Eastern Station Chief. The potential for inter-Albanian violence in Kosovo, and not only Albanian nationalistic violence against minority Serbs and neighboring states like the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) and Montenegro, is becoming more and more likely as the rival Kosovo Albanian politicians plan to enhance their power through all means, from political to intelligence-gathering to violence.

Even though the Albanians are united in their desire for an independent "Kosovar" state, away from Serbia, there are very strong and long-lived divisions and animosities just under the surface, and these could blow up in any time. At present, the two major factors influencing and exacerbating this effect are the growing prestige and power of the Vetevendosje (Self-Determination) extremist movement, and the sudden disappearance of Ramush Haradinaj, the ex-KLA commander and onetime Kosovo Prime Minister, who was sent back to The Hague, on February 26, 2007, to stand trial for war crimes committed in the Kosovo war.

Power vacuum and threat assessment.

With Ramush Haradinaj gone from the picture, for now, the stage is set for a competition for power between Hashim (also transliterated as Hasim) Thaci,<1> who has great ambitions for a heightened future role; Agim Ceku (also eku), another KLA veteran and current Prime Minister<2>; and Daut Haradinaj (and the rest of the Haradinaj clan<3>), as well as other more marginal players like the publisher-turned-politician, Veton Surroi, who runs the Ora movement.

Hashim Thaci, another KLA veteran leader, is now the lead opposition politician in Kosovo with his PDK party. He has been in recent speeches trying to appear like a moderate, pro-UN leader, and is telling Albanians to accept the plan devised by the Finnish UN chief negotiator for Kosovo's future status, Martti Ahtisaari, although this plan does not state exactly that Kosovo would be independent. Thaci also tried publicly to emphasize that the rights of minorities should to be safeguarded, in order to win the approval of international audiences. Serbs are, however, suspicious of Thaci and the entire former KLA leadership, remembering the ethnic cleansing carried out against them by these leaders.

One of the main battlefields for control between the political/paramilitary elite, and which has been used for a very long time already, is the use of private intelligence agencies under political parties or leaders.

See: Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, January 16, 2006: Kosovo SHIK, Directly Linked With Albanian SHIK Intelligence Organization, Prepares for "Big Push" For Kosovo Independence.

In Autumn 2006, Prime Minister Agim Ceku decided to create an official intelligence service for Kosovo, despite the cautions of the UNMIK authorities, who did not mandate such a group, with its dangerous implications for the safety of ethnic minorities and, indeed, its own international staff.

However, a task force within the UK Ministry of Defence, the Security Sector Development Advisory Team (SSDAT), was sent to Kosovo in February and April 2005, officially for fact-finding and advisory purposes, but really to retrieve sensitive data of interest to the UK-US intelligence community regarding Kosovo's potential to be a terrorist "hotspot", a British source surveyed by GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs stated. The group's concluding report, in May 2005, noted that "parallel structures", including "intelligence structures affiliated to political parties" in Kosovo, are important in "undermining security".

GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs has learned that the British team confirmed -- although it did not publish in its public report -- findings that the most potential for upheaval lay with the commonly-known illegal intelligence services associated with the Albanian political parties/paramilitary leaders. The League for a Democratic Kosovo (LDK), formerly led by the now-deceased Ibrahim Rugova, was long known for having its own private intelligence services, with the tutelage of Rame Maraj, fronting these activities officially through the so-called Institute for Researching Public Opinion and Strategies (IHPSO).

The eyes and ears of Thaci's PDK, on the other hand, is the SHIK (the same name as the intelligence service of the Republic of Albania), led by Kadri Veseli. In the GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs report of January 16, 2006, it was revealed that a leading jihad supporter, and former KLA commander, Xhevat Haliti, was another key figure in the K-SHIK, as were Rexhep Selimi, Ljatif Gasi and the notorious gangster, Sabit Geci. The group takes financing partly from the organized crime.

Further, the roots of the K-SHIK lie in the KLA structures and it received early funding from the Kosovo Albanian diaspora (such as the notorious "Homeland Calling" war fundraising movement), and, to keep legitimate front and contact with certain members of the international community who had -- and still have -- open access to all locations in Kosovo and throughout the Balkans. A major example of the international contacts sustained by K-SHIK include The Hague Tribunal (the International Criminal Court on the Former Yugoslavia: ICCY). K-SHIK has infiltrated agents into target areas of interest (chiefly, the Serb-populated ones) through apparently good-willed NGOs, mainly, the Council for the Defense of Human Rights and Freedoms (KLMDNJ).

The Haradinaj effect. There are conspicuous comparisons between the situations in April 2005, when Ramush Haradinaj was first indicted by the Hague, and now, when he has been returned there (as of February 26, 2007) to await trial. In the first period, the departure of the powerful Haradinaj led directly to LDK-PDK infighting, in which the parties' intelligence services were used in tit-for-tat bombings, raids and intimidation attempts.

It is highly likely, GIS sources say, that with Haradinaj again being gone in The Hague, this time for potentially much longer, and with Thaci's position rising strongly by each day, a new "intelligence war" marked by inter-Albanian fighting will confuse and exacerbate the situation.

That is, this renewed infighting will occur at the same time that severe nationalist elements, led by Albin Kurti's Self-Determination movement, strike against the international UNMIK authorities in order to influence the final status negotiations with Serbia and accelerate the a fait accompli of Kosovo independence, by intimidating the international administration into leaving or drastically restricting its activities.

Signs of this have already materialized: the bombing of an OSCE [Organization for Security & Cooperation in Europe] parking lot in Pec, Western Kosovo, on February 26, 2007; a bombing of UNMIK vehicles a week before in Pristina; a major Self-Determination protest on February 10, 2007, which led to two Albanian protesters being killed, dramatically increasing the anti-UN sentiment of the people; and other actions consistent with this trend, such as numerous weapons seizures and resumed checkpoints in different parts of Kosovo.

Destabilizing neighboring states for political clout. The Self-Determination movement has also pledged to carry its message and movement into neighboring FYROM, with the intention of causing destabilization there so as to influence again the status negotiations. In fact, the group stated its plan to open an office in FYROM and to agitate for the rights of Kosovo Albanian students who chose to study in the major Albanian-populated city of FYROM, Tetovo.

See: Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, January 31, 2007: Arms Smuggling Routes Enhance Extremist Capabilities in South-West Balkans; Albanian Separatists Expected to Mobilize in Spring if Kosovo Does Not Get Independence.

However, the PDK leader, Thaci, has strongly criticized Kurti's group for this plan, and so has the former militant leader of the Albanian NLA (National Liberation Army), Ali Ahmeti, also one of the founders of the KLA, who is from FYROM.<4>

On February 22, 2007, Self-Determination Movement deputy chairman Glauk Konjufca declared that the Ceku Government's official acceptance of Ahtisaari's plan for Kosovo would anger Albanians - who want nothing less than absolute independence from Serbia, to the extent that FYROM may also be destabilized - and in that stage the Haradinaj-Ahmeti militant groupings would return to action a long and extended theater of operation, from Kosovo through western FYROM to Struga in the south, and terrorist attacks elsewhere and in the centre of the country could not be excluded either.

However, the criticism from Ahmeti, now president of the DUI (Democratic Union for Integration), the main Albanian opposition party in FYROM, is deceptive. GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs sources in Kosovo reported earlier in the Winter of 2006-07, and it was later confirmed in German reports, that Ahmeti had made a secret visit to the Haradinaj family compound in western Kosovo to plan a scheme of action. It is in Ahmeti's interest to challenge the FYROM Government, to force it to allow him to officially return to power, and it is the Haradinaj clan's interest to take the credit for "liberating" Kosovo, and to exercise the pressure on international administrators in Kosovo to ensure that Ramush Haradinaj, is acquitted and freed from The Hague trial.

Another reason to be skeptical of Ahmeti/DUI's statement against the extremist movement is the fact that Ahmeti's uncle, and another founder of the KLA, Fazli Veliu, participated openly in the February 10, 2007, Pristina protest in which two people were killed. Hashim Thaci, who is believed to have allied himself with DUI's rival, the incumbent DPA (Democratic Party of Albanians), now in coalition in the FYROM Government, openly accused Veliu/Ahmeti of bringing in student protesters by bus for the February 10, 2007, protest from FYROM. On February 21, 2007, Self-Determination announced opening of offices in Tetovo and Skopje, to organize Albanian students, allegedly to help their civil rights but more realistically to prepare them for future protests and destabilizing acts.

On a related topic, during the 2001 civil war in FYROM -- started by Ahmeti's NLA -- it was widely reported that Daut Haradinaj personally oversaw a foreign Islamic Mujahedin brigade which was conducted across the border to the Tetovo theater of conflict, where it then conducted atrocities against Government troops; the connections between the Albanian paramilitary structures and al-Qaida have been widely reported since the mid-1990s.

At the same time, Thaci's SHIK and the remnants of LDK illegal intelligence structures have been allowed by the UN and KFOR (NATO) forces to remain functioning in Kosovo, because they promise the latter to supply information on Islamic elements. However, in most cases, GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs sources attest, the quality of information they supply is of little value or even deliberately false.

Similarly, the ethnic-Albanians have targeted Montenegro. Montenegrin State Prosecutor Vesna Medenica had announced in November 2006, that some Albanians arrested on September 2006 in Montenegro had been charged among others for terrorist acts. The Albanians were arrested in the southern border town of Tuzi, in the eve of Montenegro's September 10, 2006, parliamentary elections, the first since the country declared its independence from Serbia. Tuzi is about 20 kilometers south of Podgorica, close to the border with Albania, and is dominated by ethnic Albanians who account five percent of Montenegro's population. The members of the group, which is called The Movement for the Rights of Albanians in Montenegro, were planning terrorist attacks in Tuzi in order to intimidate the non-Albanian population there and gain autonomy for the region. The plan's code-name was Eagle Flight, according to the State Prosecutor Medenica.

At the time, reports revealed that different weapons, including rocket-propelled grenade launchers, mortars, grenades, explosives, machineguns and ammunition, had been found during a raid on houses in the town and in nearby caves. The group receives financial support from members of the Albanian diaspora in the West, mainly from immigrants in the United States, which helped it secure the weapons, munitions, forged documents and other means needed to carry out the plans. Medenica also quoted that the group maintained close ties with former members of KLA, with whom it planned to carry out joint terrorist attacks.

No matter who the international community overseers in Kosovo side with, they risk of being manipulated by pro-jihadist or jihad -indifferent criminal elements, therefore, and with the bulk of the Administration's energy being left for self-protection and watching the political situation of Kosovo, they have not many resources left to verify the "intelligence" they receive from such untrustworthy groups. Meanwhile, the "civil society" elements on which UNMIK also relies to get information (charities, NGOs, confidence-building groups, legal organizations, sport youth associations, conflict resolution organizations) have been completely infiltrated by Islamist-sympathizing elements, some with direct connections to Iran, Saudi Arabia, and so on.

The cumulative result of these factors is the current existence of an extremely volatile, fluid, and particularly dangerous phase in Kosovo and for the Balkan region in whole. At this stage, GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs sources state, the analysis to be made is that, on the ground, UNMIK civilian control is unaware of what will happen on a day-to-day basis.

To isolate them, there are several "hot button" issues which could at any moment spark a new riot from the Albanians. One is the Ramush Haradinaj issue. Another is the question of the minority Serbs and the popular perception that they receiving too many concessions in the UN-supported status solution. These issues lead to more protests, and thus to the protesters being attacked by police, which history shows from similar revolts in 1968, 1974, 1981, and 1989 (those ones conducted against Yugoslav authorities, of course), have the cumulative effect of radicalizing militancy in the Kosovo Albanian population.

The West seems to have little stomach for more Balkan policing, with more urgent global problems going on, and in this environment it is clear that Kosovo Albanian militants/political clans now possess an unprecedented tactical advantage. However, while this comes as bad news for Kosovo minorities and even the average Albanians, it also guarantees continued instability and infighting from the major Kosovo Albanian factions, which can be expected to make further use of their intelligence services for intimidation and attacks.

The timetable for violence remains March-June 2007. By not being watched due to all this confusion, however, strengthened Islamic elements funded by Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other Islamic states can quietly consolidate their position in Kosovo and wait for the moment when the public's dissatisfaction with the usual political options allows them to be a real political-social alternative, which is the biggest danger for Kosovo.

Footnotes:

1. See, among other Defense & Foreign Affairs references to Thaci: Defense & Foreign Affairs, August 9, 2004: Olympic Terrorist Attacks Ready, Awaiting Go-Ahead, With Kosovo Albanians in Lead . Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, January 16, 2006: Kosovo SHIK, Directly Linked With Albanian SHIK Intelligence Organization, Prepares for "Big Push" For Kosovo Independence . Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, January 25, 2006: Death of Kosovo's Albanian President Ibrahim Rugova Delays Status Talks and Increases Likelihood of Violence . See also: Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, February 11, 2004: Report on Albanian Criminal-Terrorist Links Providing Key Intelligence for Olympics Security, "War on Terror" . And Background Analysis in Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, November 7, 2006: Historical Considerations on Kosovo .

2. See, among other Defense & Foreign Affairs references: Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, October 23, 2003: Slovenia Arrests Key Kosovo Islamist, Based on Serbia-Montenegro Indictment, and October 24, 2003: As Anticipated, KLA Leader Ceku Released Following UN Intervention . Also Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, March 5, 2004: UN Mission In Kosovo Continues Protection for KLA Leader Ceku . Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, August 21, 2003: Former Kosovo Terrorist Leader on Defensive After Allegations of Involvement in New Violence; Possible Links to Islamist Upsurge in the Region . References to Ceku's ongoing role can be found also in the Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis of November 13, 2006: Kosovo Inches Closer to a Form of Independence Under US and UN Pressure, and July 8, 2005: Kosovo Albanians Confirmed as Having Assassinated Greek Intelligence Station Chief .

3. See: Defense & Foreign affairs Daily, December 15, 2004: Profile: Ramush (HilmI) Haradinaj, New Prime Minister of Kosovo & Metohija, and Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, December 16, 2004: Dossier: Involvement of Haradinay Brothers in Terrorist and Criminal Activities in Kosovo . See also: Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, March 9, 2005: Resignation of Kosovo Prime Minister After War Crimes Charges Increases Pressure on Serbia . Some further background material, including references to the Haradinaj clan, can be found in Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, February 11, 2004: Report on Albanian Criminal-Terrorist Links Providing Key Intelligence for Olympics Security, "War on Terror" .

4. See, among other references, Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, June 23, 2006, for references on Ali Ahmeti: Attacks by Feuding Albanian Political Groups in FYROM Threaten July 5, 2006, Elections . Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, September 7, 2006: Wahhabi Fundamentalists Push for Power in FYR of Macedonia, and Expand Operations after Albanian Party Benefactor Not Selected for New Government . See also Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, April 16, 2002: Facing Albanian Expansionist Resurgence in Macedonia as the ANA Emerges .