Nexus - 1303 - New Times Magazine-pages

Page Content (OCR)

Laden and Khalid bin Mahfouz... Both men were involved with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International... indeed, bin Mahfouz owned twenty percent of its stock... A decade later, Harken Energy, the company willing to handsomely buy out George W.'s crumbling oil and gas business, had its own CIA connections...17.6 percent of Harken's stock was owned by Abdullah Baksh, another Saudi magnate reported by some to be representing Khalid bin Mahfouz.* Belgrade's army... Even after the 1999 Kumanovo agreement settled the Kosovo conflict, the UN administration of the province...allowed a thriving heroin traffic along this northern route from Turkey. The former commanders of the KLA, both local clans and aspiring national leaders, continued to dominate the transit traffic through the Balkans.” Mahfouz.* Yet once again, as in Azerbaijan, these drug-financed Islamist jihadists received American assistance, this time from the US (Khalid bin Mahfouz, however, has categorically denied being government.* At the time, critics charged that US oil interests an investor in either Arbusto or Harken Energy.) were interested in building a trans-Balkan pipeline with US Army protection; although initially ridiculed, these critics were Al-Qaeda, the KLA in Kosovo and the Trans-Balkan eventually proven correct.” BBC News announced in December Pipeline 2004 that a $1.2 billion pipeline, south of a huge new US Army The United States, al-Qaeda and oil company interests base in Kosovo, has been given a go-ahead by the governments converged again in Kosovo. Though the origins of the Kosovo of Albania, Bulgaria and Macedonia.” tragedy were rooted in local enmities, oil became a prominent The closeness of the UCK/KLA to al-Qaeda was aspect of the outcome. There the al-Qaeda—backed UCK or acknowledged again in the Western press after Afghan-connected "Kosovo Liberation Army" (KLA) was directly supported and KLA guerrillas proceeded in 2001 to conduct guerrilla warfare in politically empowered by NATO, Macedonia. Press accounts included an beginning in 1998.” But according to Interpol report containing the a source of Tim Judah, KLA allegation that one of bin Laden's representatives had already met with senior lieutenants was the commander American, British and Swiss . of an elite UCK/KLA unit operating in intelligence agencies in 1996 and The United States, al-Qaeda Kosovo in 1999." This was probably possibly "several years earlier". This i i Mohammed al-Zawahiri. would presumably have been back and oil company interests The American right wing, which when Arab Afghan members of the converged again opposed Clinton's actions in Kosovo, KLA, like Abdul-Wahid al-Qahtani, in Kosovo transmitted reports that "the KLA's were fighting in Bosnia. *! . head of elite forces, Muhammed al- Mainstream accounts of the Kosovo Zawahiri, was the brother of Ayman war are silent about the role of al- al-Zawahiri, the military commander Qaeda in training and financing the for bin Laden's Al-Qaeda".°? UCK/KLA, yet this fact has been recognised by experts and to my Meanwhile, Marcia Kurop in the Wall Street Journal Europe [November 1, knowledge has never been contested by them.” For example, 2001] wrote: "The Egyptian surgeon turned terrorist leader James Bissett, former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia, said: Ayman al-Zawahiri has operated terrorist training camps, Many members of the Kosovo Liberation Army were sent for weapons of mass destruction factories and money-laundering and training in terrorist camps in Afghanistan... Milosevic is drug-trading networks throughout Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, right. There is no question of their [al-Qaeda's] Bulgaria, Turkey and Bosnia."* participation in conflicts in the Balkans. It is very well According to Yossef Bodansky, director of the US documented.* Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare: In March 2002, Michael Steiner, the United Nations Bin Laden's Arab "Afghans" also have assumed a dominant administrator in Kosovo, warned of "importing the Afghan role in training the Kosovo Liberation Army... [By mid- danger to Europe" because several cells trained and financed by March 1999, the UCK included] many elements controlled al-Qaeda remained in the region.™ and/or sponsored by the US, German, British, and Croatian As late s 1997, the UCK/KLA had been recognised by the US intelligence services.“ artad + 5 (Khalid bin Mahfouz, however, has categorically denied being an investor in either Arbusto or Harken Energy.) The United States, al-Qaeda and oil company interests converged again in Kosovo. In March 2002, Michael Steiner, the United Nations administrator in Kosovo, warned of "importing the Afghan danger to Europe" because several cells trained and financed by al-Qaeda remained in the region.™ As late as 1997, the UCK/KLA had been recognised by the US as a terrorist group supported in part by the heroin traffic.** The Washington Times reported in 1999 [May 3]: The Kosovo Liberation Army, which the Clinton administration has embraced and some members of Congress want to arm as part of the NATO bombing campaign, is a terrorist organization that has financed much of its war effort with profits from the sale of heroin. Meantime, by 2000, according to DEA statistics, Afghan heroin accounted for almost 20 per cent of the heroin seized in the United States—nearly double the percentage taken four years earlier. Much of it is now distributed by Kosovar Albanians.* Al-Qaeda and the Petroleum-Military Complex It is important to understand that the conspicuous influence of petroleum money in the administrations of two Bush presidents was also prominent under Clinton. Former CIA officer Robert Baer [ See No Evil, 2002] complained about the oil lobby's influence with Sheila Heslin of Clinton's National Security Council staff: Heslin's sole job, it seemed, was to carry water for an Alfred McCoy supplies a detailed and footnoted corroboration [The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, 2001 ed.]: Albanian exiles used drug profits to ship Czech and Swiss arms back to Kosovo for the separatist guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In 1997-98, these Kosovar drug syndicates armed the KLA for a revolt against 14 = NEXUS APRIL — MAY 2006 www.nexusmagazine.com