Sources:
http://www.globalresearch.ca
June 14, 2001
Title: “America at War in Macedonia”
Author: Michel Chossudovsky
July 26, 2001
Title: “NATO Invades Macedonia”
Author: Michel Chossudovsky
Faculty evaluators: Elizabeth Burch, Phil Beard, John Lund
Student researchers: Alessandra Diana, David V. Immel
The CIA destabilized the political balance in Macedonia to allow easier access for a US-British owned oil pipeline, and to prevent Macedonia from entering the European Union (EU), thereby strengthening the US dollar in a German deutschmark dominated region.
Without Macedonia in the EU, British and US oil companies have an advantage over European counterparts in building oil pipelines. Actions toward destabilization intend to impose economic control over national currencies, and protect British-US oil companies such as BP-Amoco-ARCO, Chevron, and Texaco against Europe’s Total-Fina-Elf. The British-US consortium controls the AMBO Trans-Balkin pipeline project linking the Bulgarian port of Burgas to Vlore on the Albanian Adriatic coastline. The power game is designed to increase British-US domination in the region by distancing Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Albania from the influence of EU countries such as Germany, Italy, France and Belgium. It’s an effort supported by Wall Street’s financial establishment, to destabilize and discredit the deutschmark and the Euro, with hopes of imposing the US dollar as the sole currency for the region.
The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and the National Liberation Army (NLA) were trained in Macedonia by British Special Forces and equipped by the CIA. British military sources confirm that Gezim Ostremi, NLA Commander, was sponsored by the UN and trained by British Special Forces to head the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC). When Ostremi left his job as a United Nations Officer to join the NLA, the commander remained on the UN payroll. Attacks within Macedonia by the NLA/KLA last year, coincided chronologically with the process of EU enlargement and the signing of the historic Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) between the EU and Macedonia. These attacks paved the way for further US military and political presence in the region.
In a strange twist the CIA, NATO, and British Special Forces provided weapons and training to the NLA/KLA terrorists, while at the same time, Germany provided Macedonia’s security forces with all-terrain vehicles, advanced weapons, and equipment to protect themselves from NLA/KLA attacks. US military advisers, on assignment to the KLA/NLA through private mercenary companies, remained in contact with NATO and US military and intelligence planners. It was Washington and London who decided on the broad direction of KLA-NLA military operations in Macedonia.
Following the August, 2001 Framework Peace Agreement, 3,500 armed NATO troops entered Macedonia with the intent of disarming Albanian rebels. Washington’s humanitarian efforts for the NLA/KLA suggested its intent to protect the terrorists rather then disarm them. Vice President Dick Cheney’s former firm, Halliburton Energy, is directly linked to the AMBO’s Trans-Balkans Oil Pipeline.
Last year’s conflict in Macedonia is a small part of a growing rift between the Anglo-American and European interests in the Balkans. In the wake of the war in Yugoslavia, Britain has allied itself with the US and severed many of its ties with Germany, France, and Italy. Washington’s design is to ensure the dominance of the US military-industrial complex, in alliance with Britain’s major defense contractors, and British-US oil. These developments establish significant control over strategic pipelines, transportation, and communication corridors in the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union.
UPDATE BY MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY: While the CIA admits that Osama bin Laden was an “intelligence asset” during the Cold War, the relationship is said to go way back.
The fact that Al Qaeda continues to support KLA terrorist operations in Macedonia, with the full support of NATO and the US government, has been carefully overlooked. With the complicity of NATO and the US State Department. Mujahedeen mercenaries from the Middle East and Central Asia were first recruited to fight in the ranks of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1998-99, largely supporting NATO’s war effort.
Bin Laden had visited Albania himself. His was one of several fundamentalist groups that had sent units to fight in Kosovo. He is believed to have established an operation in Albania in 1994. Albanian sources say Sali Berisha, who was then president, had links with some groups that later proved to be extreme fundamentalists. (Sunday Times, London, 29 November 1998.)
Among the foreign mercenaries now fighting in Macedonia (October 2001), in the ranks of self-proclaimed National Liberation Army (NLA), are Mujahedeen from the Middle East and the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. Also within the KLA’s proxy force in Macedonia are senior US military advisers from a private mercenary outfit on contract to the Pentagon. (Scotland on Sunday, Glasgow, 15 June 2001)
Extensively documented by the Macedonian press and statements of the Macedonian authorities, the US government and the “Islamic Militant Network” are working hand in glove in supporting and financing the self-proclaimed National Liberation Army (NLA), involved in the terrorist attacks in Macedonia. The NLA is a proxy of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In turn the KLA and the UN sponsored Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC) are identical institutions with the same commanders and military personnel. KPC Commanders on UN salaries are fighting in the NLA together with the Mujahedeen. In a bitter twist, while supported and financed by Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, the KLA-NLA is also supported by NATO and the United Nations mission to Kosovo (UNMIK).
The KLA-NLA terrorists are funded by US military aid, the United Nations peace-keeping budget, as well as by several Islamic organizations including Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda. Meanwhile, drug money is being used to finance the terrorists with the complicity of the US government. US military advisers mingle with Mujahedeen within the same paramilitary force, Western mercenaries from NATO countries fight alongside Mujahedeen recruited in the Middle East and Central Asia.
The Bush Administration has stated that it has proof that Osama bin Laden is behind the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon. A major war, supposedly “against international terrorism”, has been launched by the Bush Administration. In Macedonia, however, the evidence amply confirms that the Bush Administration (together with NATO) is directly supporting terrorist organizations which have links to Al Qaeda. In other words, the Bush Administration is harboring international terrorism as part of its foreign policy agenda. The main justification for waging the so-called war on terrorism has been a total fabrication. The American people have been deliberately and consciously misled by their government into supporting a major military adventure which affects our collective future.