Al-Qaeda's links in the Balkans; Macedonian officials contend the Bush administration largely is ignoring intelligence information that has connected al-Qaeda elements to Albanian separatists

0 Comments | Insight on the News, July 22, 2002 | by Jamie Dettmer

Nonetheless, whatever the motives of the current Macedonian government for pushing the al-Qaeda ties now, U.S. and Western intelligence sources acknowledge privately that Albania and Kosovo attracted interest from bin Laden in the late 1990s and that Albania continues to serve as a money-raising center for al-Qaeda.

Apart from sending fighters to aid the KLA during the struggle in Kosovo with the Serbs, al-Qaeda is believed to have contributed funds to Albanian separatists and to have established strong links with Albanian Mafia leaders, who aid the formally disbanded but still existing KLA in schemes to raise money through narco-trafficking, prostitution and gun-running [see "Heroin and Sex Trade Fuel Albanian Nationalism," Aug. 13, 2001].

The Albanian Mafia controls the major Balkans narcotics-smuggling route that runs through Turkey, Bulgaria, Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia. Although evidence remains sketchy of al-Qaeda involvement in narcotics, that isn't the case for the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan that profited from the heroin trade.

According to Fatos Klosi, the head of Albanian intelligence, a major network of bin Laden supporters was established in 1998 in Albania under the cover of various Muslim charities. The network served as a springboard for operations in Europe. Klosi claimed the network had "already infiltrated other parts of Europe from bases in Albania through traffic in illegal immigrants, who have been smuggled by speedboat across the Mediterranean to Italy in large numbers."

Yossef Bodansky, director of the House Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, claimed in his book, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America, that the Albanian network was headed by Muhammad al-Zawahiri, the engineer brother of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian who mentored bin Laden and, according to the United States, was the brains behind Sept. 11 and other attacks.

U.S. intelligence sources have confirmed to INSIGHT that dozens of KLA fighters trained in bin Laden camps in Afghanistan and that some of them returned to fight with al-Qaeda and the Taliban after the Sept. 11 terror attacks against New York City and Washington.

So why the cautious approach in the Balkans? "The murky complexity of Balkan politics makes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict look simple" confides a private-sector security expert influential with the Bush administration. "We backed the KLA in the fight against Serbia and we have to take care not to open up a can of worms."

Macedonian officials maintain that Western governments, including the United States, appear determined to downplay the al-Qaeda links with Albanian separatists because to highlight the ties could provoke public disaffection with NATO's continued presence in Kosovo. It also might prompt questions about why the West isn't taking a harder line with militant Albanians.

James Phillips, a research fellow at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, takes a more benign view. "Al-Qaeda has a modus operandi of helping Islamic groups such as the KLA and of infiltrating to become a major influence within them. The Bush administration may well not be ignoring the Macedonian information, but it is much more concerned about al-Qaeda threats in the U.S. than in the Balkans. In short, the White House may have opted for the tactical approach of laying off in the short term."