GlobalPost: US and allies ignore Kosovo's Mafia
In an investigative report, GlobalPost's Matt McAllester wrote that the US and allies ignore organized crime at the highest levels of the new democracy.
Kosovo, a fledgling democracy that the United States and NATO together helped liberate and then create in a globally popular war that was partly framed by the United States and its allies as a war of humanitarian intervention, is now hamstrung by corruption and intimidation.
Former political leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), Hashim Thaci, and many of his fellow Kosovo Albanian guerrilla leaders who were key U.S. and NATO allies in the 1999 war have clung to power and are facing numerous allegations of criminal wrongdoing. In a country whose very existence was fuelled by the West's concern for human rights, many citizens are afraid to criticize a prime minister and his allies, who stand accused of routinely violating human rights.
Based on three months of reporting, involving dozens of interviews with politicians, former KLA members, diplomats, former NATO soldiers, political analysts and officials, GlobalPost has found that concerns about criminality among Kosovo's ruling political class went largely ignored by the United States, NATO and the United Nations over the past 11 years -- and in some cases U.S. and U.N. officials thwarted criminal investigations into former senior KLA figures. That, according to many of these people who have played a part in Kosovo's recent history, was because the United States, NATO and the United Nations believed that keeping the peace in Kosovo between its ethnic majority Albanians and minority Serbian population -- and Serbia itself -- was a priority that outstripped all other concerns, including allegations of horrific human rights abuses.
Read Part 1 of the full report at GlobalPost
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