[Marxism] KLA Freedom Fighters

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/7990984.stm
Horrors of KLA prison camps revealed
Michael Montgomery
BBC Radio 4, Crossing Continents

The man spoke plainly as he explained the horrors he lived through in a 
Kosovo Liberation Army prison camp 10 years ago. He told me about how he 
watched people beaten with steel pipes, cut with knives, left for days 
without food, and shot and killed.

"What can you feel when you see those things?" he said. "It's something 
that is stuck in my mind for the rest of my life. You cannot do those 
things to people, not even to animals."

As the man talked, his mother paced nervously in the nearby kitchen. She 
was panicked and tears were streaming down her face.

"They'll kill him, they'll kill him," she moaned, clutching one of her 
grandchildren.

But her son persisted. We spent hours in the family's sitting room as 
our source detailed allegations of possible war crimes by KLA officers 
in a military camp in the Albanian border town of Kukes.

It was a crucial interview for a delicate story I have been 
investigating for years.

Mystery of the missing

Soon after the war ended in Kosovo, I started looking into the thousands 
of civilians who disappeared during and after the conflict. Many 
Albanian victims were dumped in wells or transported to mass graves as 
far away as Belgrade.

I had met sources who spoke vaguely about secret camps in Albania where 
Kosovo Serbs, Albanians and Roma were interrogated, tortured and in most 
cases killed.

I met another source who agreed to share important details about KLA 
prison camps. This man cut a very different profile.

He had returned from a successful career abroad to join the KLA in its 
fight for Kosovo's independence from Serbia.

The man was still proud of the goals he fought for, but he had become 
haunted by the treatment of civilians he had seen at a KLA prison camp. 
More than that, he said he felt angry and betrayed by KLA commanders who 
tolerated and even ordered the abuses.

"It didn't seem strange at the time," he told me as he described seeing 
desperate civilians locked in a filthy agricultural shed.

“ Now, looking back, I know that some of the things that were done to 
innocent civilians were wrong ”
Former KLA Fighter
He said the civilians were Serbs and Roma seized by KLA soldiers and 
were being hidden away from Nato troops. The source believes the 
captives were sent across the border to Albania and killed.

"Now, looking back, I know that some of the things that were done to 
innocent civilians were wrong. But the people who did these things act 
as if nothing happened, and continue to hurt their own people, Albanians."

This man was one of eight former KLA fighters who revealed some of their 
darkest secrets from the war.

A soldier's story

Yet another source spoke of driving trucks packed with shackled 
prisoners - mainly Serbian civilians from Kosovo - to secret locations 
in Albania where they were eventually killed.

He recalled hearing two of the captives begging to be shot rather than 
tortured and "cut into pieces".

"I was sick. I was just waiting for it to end," the source told me. "It 
was hard. I thought we were fighting a war [of liberation] but this was 
something completely different."

It has taken these men 10 years to speak to an outsider about the dark 
side of the war. They were breaking a code of silence that has held 
strong in Kosovo.

Very few Kosovo Albanians have publicly revealed crimes committed by 
their own side. And for good reason. Witnesses who have agreed to 
provide testimony for prosecutions of KLA commanders have faced 
intimidation and death threats.

Some have been killed, according to United Nations officials in Kosovo.

There is another reason. All the men we spoke with insisted they were 
Kosovan patriots and would take up arms again to defend the country's 
independence.

But that is precisely the point: independence - of a sort - arrived for 
Kosovo last year. Their wartime goal has been attained.

As one of the former KLA fighters told me: "Now is the time to be honest 
to ourselves and build a real state."

Crossing Continents: Kosovo will broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday, 9 
April 2009 at 1100 BST. The programme will be repeated on Monday, 13 
April at 2030 BST.


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