“[T]he KLA [Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army] was never what you mean by a guerilla movement. It was a foreign-organized group of terrorists delivering a message.

The so-called ‘International Community,’ that is, NATO, had trumpeted that they had plans for the Albanians, that they would give them independence and a Greater Albania, make them a major power in southern Europe. So there was this intense propaganda from the West for ten years and at the same time the crisis in the Albanian community was quite pronounced. Even before the bombing, some Albanian representatives asked the Yugoslav government to allow their people to form convoys and go toward Macedonia, basically to save themselves from this crisis…

The reason they left and went out of Serbia, to Albania or Macedonia, is rooted in the cultural history of Albanian people living in Kosovo. Because of their mindset, which I think people in the West thoroughly misunderstand, the KLA had a big impact when it attacked and executed Albanians who cooperated with the government…

You see the KLA was trying to fulfill their own overall goals. To achieve these goals, which involved proving to the West they could deliver, they told the ethnic Albanians to leave. And this was not a polite request. It was an order. Do you see?

At the same time the KLA, their special units, and then a bit later NATO bombers, were attacking traffic on important roads that led to inner Serbia. ..

It dissuaded them from going further into Serbia and it also told them: Yugoslavia can’t help you.

Meanwhile the United States was training their KLA proxies in Albania including in how to wage this sort of psychological warfare, to deliver the message that Albanians should temporarily vacate Serbia.

— Cedomir Prlincevic, President of the Jewish Community of Pristina, driven out by KLA terrorists in 1999, Formerly the Chief Archivist of Kosovo

http://emperors-clothes.com/interviews/keys-email1.htm

How NATO Staged Albanian Flight during NATO Bombing
– Part 1 of 3 parts –

Interview with Cedomir Prlincevic, President of the Jewish Community of Pristina, driven out by KLA terrorists in 1999
Formerly the Chief Archivist of Kosovo

Interviewer: Jared Israel
Translator: Petar Makara
[Posted 3 December 2000 * Re-posted 26 March 2004]

If you would like to send Part I by email, and want a ‘clean’ text, it is posted at http://tinyurl.com/ypzf3

Part II is at http://tinyurl.com/2g8qa

Part III is at http://tinyurl.com/2r6sv

The text is posted in full at
http://emperors-clothes.com/interviews/keys1.htm

=======================================

This is the second Emperor’s Clothes interview with Cedomir Prlincevic (pronounced Chedomeer Pralinchevich).

It is also the most important piece we have published about Yugoslavia.

What Mr. Prlincevic says is key for understanding the strategy behind US and European actions in the Balkans and in so-called trouble spots around the world. Mr. Prlincevic explains how the Great Powers attacked a target group (the Serbs) by taking advantage of the vulnerability of a clan-based ethnic group (Albanians) in order to organize the latter for terror while “justifying” that terror by portraying Albanians as victims of Serbian abuse.

Mr. Prlincevic was President of the Jewish Community in Pristina. All members of that community were driven out of Kosovo by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) after NATO took over in 1999. To read the first interview we did with Mr. Prlincevic, where he describes the nightmare of being evicted by KLA terrorists, go to
http://emperors-clothes.com/interviews/prlincevic.htm

NATO claims it had to bomb Yugoslavia in the Spring of 1999 and take control of Kosovo to stop supposed ‘abuse’ of Albanian residents. During the bombing, the world was shown TV footage day in and day out of Albanians. It appeared that they were fleeing Serbian ‘abuse’. The same images were repeated, again and again.

Cedomir Prlincevic, the leading historian of Kosovo, says this was a carefully staged lie.

If you want to understand what really happened in Kosovo – which has direct bearing on what is really happening in the West Bank, Gaza, Chechnya, and other areas – read this interview.

You will notice as you read that it took me awhile to grasp what Mr. Prelincevic was saying because I had a preconceived notion. I believed that either Albanians fled NATO bombs or Albanians fled Serbian abuse. Since I knew the abuse story was a lie, I assumed Albanians fled the bombs.

But I was wrong, said Mr. Prlincevic. To understand why, please read carefully what this man has to say.

Jared Israel
Editor, Emperor’s Clothes
26 March 2004

========================================================

Why Albanians Fled During NATO Bombing

========================================================

[To make it easier to follow the conversation we have separated Mr. Prlincevic and Mr. Israel’s remarks with a string of asterisks – *******]

Jared Israel: Why did so many Albanians leave Kosovo a few days after NATO began bombing? Was the Yugoslav Army attacking them?

*******

Cedomir Prlincevic: No, not attacking them. In some areas the Army did relocate people, but not out of Kosovo. The idea was to move them further into Serbia. You must understand, the Army was presented with a most difficult situation. A major clash was expected between NATO and Yugoslav troops. This kind of NATO ground attack was a special threat in the area [of Kosovo] bordering Albania.

Under those circumstances, with the KLA [Kosovo Liberation Army] attacking inside Kosovo and from Albania and with NATO poised to invade and about to start bombing from airplanes, how could the Yugoslav Army hope to protect that border population?

You should understand, the Army had had an experience like this in Vukovar. That was in 1991. Civilians were trapped in a battlefield between the Army and the Croatian Ustashe [neo-fascist] secessionists. To avoid making the same mistake again, the Army wanted to empty a space 40 kilometers deep so people wouldn’t be trapped between the Army, NATO and the KLA.

At the same time there was a big increase in the number of KLA terrorists illegally crossing the Albanian border into Kosovo. In that situation there were bound to be some unhappy events. It was a most difficult situation, you see.

========================================================

Albanians Assassinated

========================================================

Israel: Was this at the beginning of the bombing?

*******

Prlincevic: Yes, and earlier too. During this period, the Yugoslav government tried to organize local Albanian Crisis Centers to distribute humanitarian aid, and also a Headquarters to work with the Yugoslav Army, organizing ethnic Albanians who lived in the danger zone to move deeper into Serbia, away from potential fighting.

But those ethnic Albanians who did cooperate with the Army became a target for the KLA. Many were assassinated.

*******

Israel: Were these Crisis Centers located all over Kosovo or just near the Albanian border?

*******

Prlincevic: Mostly near the border.

The Crisis Centers distributed humanitarian help from all over Serbia. For example there was food and building materials to repair homes from the North, from Vojvodina. People sent blankets, food, clothing, everything.

========================================================

Ordinary Western citizens misunderstand Albanian culture

========================================================

Israel: Getting back to the Albanian exodus during the bombing, here’s the question: if the Yugoslav Army didn’t throw the Albanians out, why did so many leave? It’s true we don’t know the exact number. The Western media has given all sorts of figures, from 150,00 to over a million, which is slightly ridiculous – but certainly many thousands did leave. Why? To escape the bombs?

*******

Prlincevic: Not exactly.

*******

Israel: Not exactly?

*******

Prlincevic: No. The reason they left and went out of Serbia, to Albania or Macedonia, is rooted in the cultural history of Albanian people living in Kosovo. Because of their mindset, which I think people in the West thoroughly misunderstand, the KLA had a big impact when it attacked and executed Albanians who cooperated with the government.

*******

Israel: I would have thought such attacks would turn them against the KLA.

*******

Prlincevic: No, no. They led the ethnic Albanian population to stop cooperating with the Yugoslav government and start cooperating with the KLA.

*******

Israel: Doesn’t a guerilla movement need to treat ordinary people decently to get support?

*******

Prlincevic: Yes, but the KLA was never what you mean by a guerilla movement. It was a foreign-organized group of terrorists delivering a message.

The so-called ‘International Community,’ that is, NATO, had trumpeted that they had plans for the Albanians, that they would give them independence and a Greater Albania, make them a major power in southern Europe. So there was this intense propaganda from the West for ten years and at the same time the crisis in the Albanian community was quite pronounced. Even before the bombing, some Albanian representatives asked the Yugoslav government to allow their people to form convoys and go toward Macedonia, basically to save themselves from this crisis.

*******

Israel: What crisis? The fighting between the Yugoslav Army and the KLA?

*******

Prlincevic: Not exactly, although this fighting did have a big effect. So did the bombing, which started a bit later; it had a critical psychological effect. But this was related to the KLA. You see the KLA was trying to fulfill their own overall goals. To achieve these goals, which involved proving to the West they could deliver, they told the ethnic Albanians to leave. And this was not a polite request. It was an order. Do you see?

At the same time the KLA, their special units, and then a bit later NATO bombers, were attacking traffic on important roads that led to inner Serbia. ..

*******

Israel: And this influenced the Albanians?

*******

Prlincevic: Yes. It dissuaded them from going further into Serbia and it also told them: Yugoslavia can’t help you.

Meanwhile the United States was training their KLA proxies in Albania including in how to wage this sort of psychological warfare, to deliver the message that Albanians should temporarily vacate Serbia.

*******

Israel: So you’re saying that this culture, this Kosovo Albanian culture, had a strong tendency to respond to carrots and sticks?

*******

Prlincevic: That’s it. Now you’re beginning to understand.

*******

Israel: And the U.S. was telling Albanians, “We’ll help you secede; we’ll make you a star. But if you reject our help we’ll kill you.” Is that it?

*******

Prlincevic: Your question is complex. I’ll have to give a long answer.

*******

Israel: OK.

*******

Prlincevic: Historically, the Kosovo Albanians were never involved in frontal battles. Instead, they had groups of warriors called kachatzi, small bands of fighters that used hit and run tactics. But they never kept large scale weapons to use in frontline war.

Part of the purpose of the Western training was to get the KLA to surpass small group combat and become an army able to carry out NATO’s commands throughout Kosovo. NATO’s foot soldiers.

To this end, one KLA group left Kosovo and went to Albania where they were trained by the Americans, and by the way, they became the core of what is now called the Kosovo Protection Corps. They marched back into Kosovo with NATO in June 1999 and seized government offices and facilities and drove out hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Roma [“Gypsies”] Jews, pro-Yugoslav Albanians and others.

*******

Israel: You’re saying that after NATO took over Kosovo these KLA types were under orders to drive out those people?

*******

Prlincevic: Yes. We can see the results of the action of exactly those forces today. NATO planned the expulsion of 350,000 people. Without NATO’s approval and instructions, these KLA, whom NATO had trained and brought back to Kosovo, would never have attempted this mass expulsion. Impossible. NATO was eliminating a potentially rebellious population.

And remember, they didn’t expel only non-Albanians. Perhaps the most important group was Albanians who in any official capacity had helped the Yugoslav government. They had to go. NATO wanted the ethnic Albanians who stayed in Kosovo to be without a Yugoslav alternative.

*******

Israel: So this first wave of Albanians who marched across the border with the KFOR [NATO] troops – they were hardcore KLA? Not simply gangsters?

*******

Prlincevic: Well some were KLA gangsters and others were ordinary gangsters from Albania. They carried out and allowed others to carry out all kinds of crimes. Some wanted revenge; some wanted to steal; some wanted to do this; some wanted to do that, to achieve whatever political goals. And no one was interrupting the others. They were doing it altogether in concert and not interfering with each other.

*******

Israel: They were all KLA? There were no mysterious elements here? KFOR claims mysterious elements carried out (and still carry out) these crimes.

*******

Prlincevic: KFOR knows exactly who organized the expulsions, but of course, as it became clear to ethnic Albanians that KFOR would tolerate criminal actions carried out by the KLA, KLA crime became a mass phenomenon. Whoever was doing criminal stuff would use the KLA label. If someone would steal some Serb’s car, he would say: “I’m KLA.”

It got to be a joke among Albanians to call themselves ‘KLA’, to cover up. If someone wanted to rob someone else’s house, they would say – “We’re KLA.”

*******

Israel: Because they knew that KFOR wouldn’t touch them if they were KLA?

*******

Prlincevic: Yes, they became untouchable.

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This text is continued in Part II. To read Part II now, go to
http://tinyurl.com/ypzf3