Citim:
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Postimi origjinal ėshtė bėrė nga Arb
Citim:
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Postimi origjinal ėshtė bėrė nga Krokodilli
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E ketu, cili eshte Heroi? |
Nese ke dashur te fusesh Tacin ne kete liste, kam nje artikull qe tregon "heroizmin" e tij.
Kur te gjesh kohe, lexoje...
KLA chiefs 'assassinated rivals within their ranks'
Chris Hedges
Tuesday June 29, 1999
The Guardian
The senior commanders of the Kosovo Liberation Army, who have a signed agreement with Nato to disarm, carried out assassinations, arrests and purges within their ranks against potential rivals, according to present and former KLA commanders and western diplomats.
They say the campaign, in which as many as half a dozen top KLA commanders were shot dead, was directed by Hashim Thaci and two of his lieutenants, Azem Syla and Xhavit Haliti.
Although the United States has long been wary of the KLA, it has become the main ethnic Albanian power in Kosovo. KLA commanders supplied Nato with target information during the bombing campaign. Now the US and other Nato powers have effectively made Mr Thaci and the KLA partners in rebuilding Kosovo.
The agreement Nato signed with Mr Thaci envisages turning the KLA into a civilian police force and leaves open the possibility of the KLA's becoming a provisional army modelled on the US national guard.
While none of the KLA officials saw Mr Thaci or his aides execute anyone, they recounted or said they witnessed Mr Thaci's rivals being killed shortly after he or his aides threatened them with death.
"When the war started, everyone wanted to be the chief," said Rifat Haxhijaj, 30, a former lieutenant in the Yugoslav army who left the KLA last September and now lives in Switzerland. "For the leadership, this was never just a war against Serbs - it was also a struggle for power."
Mr Thaci's representative in Switzerland, Jashae Salihu, denied accounts of assassinations. "These kind of reports are untrue," he said. "Neither Thaci nor anyone else from the KLA is involved in this kind of activity. Our goal has been to establish a free Kosovo and nothing more."
The allegations were made in interviews with a dozen KLA officials or former officials, two of whom said they had witnessed executions of Mr Thaci's rivals; a former senior Albanian diplomat; a former Albanian police official who worked with the KLA; and western diplomats.
But the US state department has challenged these accounts. "We simply don't have information to substantiate allegations that there was a KLA leadership-directed programme of assassinations or executions," James Rubin, the department spokesman, said last week.
A senior state department official and a western diplomat in the Balkans said they were aware of executions of middle-grade officers suspected of collaborating with the Serbs, but that they had no evidence to link those killings with Mr Thaci.
But the western diplomat said Mr Thaci was legendary for his ruthless tactics. "Thaci has engaged in some pretty rough intimidation [of officials in a rival party], but none of them have been killed. There have been detentions, and the victims allege beatings. We cannot prove that. Thaci, according to them, was in charge of the team that detained them and was in charge of the interrogation and personally threatened them."
KLA officials also allege a campaign of assassinations in close cooperation with the Albanian government, which placed secret police agents at the disposal of the KLA.
Two former KLA leaders and a former Albanian police official, interviewed in Tirana, said Mr Haliti, who is Mr Thaci's ambassador to Albania, worked with 10 Albanian secret police agents to form an internal security network to silence dissenters in Kosovo.
Mr Thaci, 30, has named a government, with himself as prime minister. He has denounced Ibrahim Rugova, for nearly 10 years the self-styled president of Kosovo who ran a campaign of nonviolent protest after the Serbs stripped the province of its autonomy in 1989.
Mr Thaci joined the clandestine Kosovo Popular Movement in Pristina. Its members, including Mr Syla, whom Mr Thaci appointed his defence minister, and Mr Haliti, have become the KLA's core leaders.
Mr Thaci, whose nom de guerre was Snake, inspired fear and respect in his home base in Kosovo's central Drenica region as he organised armed units and ambushes against Serbian policemen.
In the early days of the rebel uprising, in March last year, there were persistent reports that Mr Thaci personally executed Kosovan Albanians whom he had branded as trai tors or collaborators. But no witnesses have surfaced.
Mr Thaci and Mr Haliti were involved, senior KLA commanders allege, in arms smuggling from Switzerland in the years before the uprising.
When the uprising began, and money and volunteers flooded into Albania from 700,000 Kosovan Albanians abroad, they found themselves in charge of tens of millions of dollars. The arms smuggling mushroomed to equip KLA camps on the border. By the war's end, KLA officials estimate, the KLA had paid £30m to Albanian officials for arms.
In April last year a KLA commander who transported weapons, Ilir Konushevci, was killed outside Tropoja in northern Albania. Days earlier, he had accused Mr Haliti of profiteering and misusing funds, according to commanders who were present.
"Cadavers have never been an obstacle to Thaci's career," said Bujar Bukoshi, Mr Rugova's prime minister in exile. One western diplomat alleged Mr Thaci had planned an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Mr Bukoshi last May. "Thaci has a single goal and that is to promote himself, to be No. 1," Mr Bukoshi said.
As the KLA suffered defeats last year, it turned to Kosovan Albanians who had served in the former Yugoslav army. The most experienced was a former colonel named Ahmet Krasniqi who had mobilised some 600 former officers. Krasniqi had surrendered his garrison in Gospic, Croatia, in 1991 rather than defend Slo bodan Milosevic's regime.
Krasniqi had the blessing of Mr Bukoshi, who allowed him to pass to the KLA £3m raised by Mr Rugova's administration. Mr Bukoshi named him commander of the rival Armed Forces of the Kosovo Republic.
Mr Thaci and Mr Haliti integrated the volunteers into KLA units, but thwarted Krasniqi's attempt to build an independent military force. In June last year the KLA blocked arms to these rival units near Pec and Decani. As tensions rose, Mr Thaci and the Albanian authorities decided to eliminate Krasniqi, according to ex-commanders and two former Albanian officials.
They said that last September Albanian police stopped Krasniqi and aides and confiscated their weapons. At a police checkpoint, according to a former KLA commander, he and his two companions were again frisked. Three men with black hoods over their faces, speaking in an Albanian accent that distinguished them from Kosovan Albanians, ordered the two men with Krasniqi to lie on the ground.
"Which one is it?" asked one gunman, according to a commander prone on the asphalt.
"The one in the middle," said another. The gunman, who held a pistol to Krasniqi's head, fired a shot. He fired two more shots at Krasniqi's head when he fell.
US officials also had reports that the KLA had killed Krasniqi, but said there were conflicting reports that he was killed by disaffected members of his own unit.
After Krasniqi's death, former KLA commanders said, the killings, purges and arrests accelerated.
As Nato bombs fell on Kosovo in April, two more outspoken commanders, Agim Ramadani, a captain in the former Yugoslav army, and Sali Ceku, were killed, both allegedly in a Serb ambush.
Although a former senior KLA officer in Tirana said Mr Thaci was responsible, a western diplomat claimed Ceku was killed by a Serb sniper and Ramadani in battle.
But the former KLA officer said rebel officials had told Ceku that he and his lieutenant, Tahir Zemaj, should leave the KLA, but Ceku had refused. Mr Zemaj fled to Germany. "Tahir knew they were serious, and he got out," the officer said. "Sali stayed, and he was killed."
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