Monster of the year

That is the best description of Hashim Thaci, Prime Minister of Kosovo, in the outgoing year. Evgeny Kryshkin explains why Thaci has earned that dubious accolade.



Until now, the Western press had portrayed Hashim Thaci, best known as the leader of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army, as a freedom fighter, struggling for the independence of Albanians- the largest community in the Serbian province. Investigations conducted by the Swiss diplomat, Dick Marty on behalf of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, PACE have revealed the true colour of Mr. Thaci. In his report to the PACE’s Commission, Thaci is presented as the leader of a criminal gang engaged in the smuggling of weapons, the distribution of illegal drugs throughout Europe and the selling of human organs for unlawful transplantation.

It was established that in 1999, Thaci’s men smuggled 300 people, mainly Serbs to a region in Albania called Kukes, from Kosovo. They were murdered in an underground clinic and their vital organs were removed and sold to a number of European clinics. Compared with Hashim Thaci, the notorious Jack the Ripper, alleged to have killed hundreds of people, seems quite a harmless person.

Strangely, the unmasking of Hashim Thaci as a coldblooded killer has not altered the attitude of the West toward him one bit. Suffice to cite the indifference of the U.S, epitomized by the statement by a spokesman of the State Department, Philip Crowley. “ I don’t know whether the report by Dick Marty will change the attitude of Washington toward Kosovo”, he said with tongue in cheek America is ready to dine even with the devil just so to stay put in the Balkans, says Elena Guskova of the Institute for Slavonic studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Kosovo is a sacred cow which the U.S. has taken under its wing. The American plan for the Balkans is uncompleted and it will not be swayed away from it come what may, Guskova said.

The all-out support of the Albanian separatists toward the end of the 20th century, NATO’s naked aggression against Yugoslavia, the deployment of the alliance’s troops in Kosovo, the tearing away of the province from Serbia and the establishment of a U.S. military base in the province are all part of the realization of the independence of Kosovo, and against that background, the cooperation with such an odious figure like Hashim Thaci was not regarded as something extraordinary. Listen to the view of Elena Guskova.

We cannot talk about moral norms when the policy of double standards which took root in 1991, has become the dominant factor in the attitude toward the Balkans. Neither the Kosovo gangsters nor the Western International forces have moral norms, says Guskova, saying that it seems that when Western nations were fashioning the scenario on the crisis in the Balkans, immorality was its foundation.

The Kosovo separatists and Western powers had the same aims, and it has now been demonstrated that crimes can be justified by political considerations; the attitude of the West toward Hashim Thaci has proved it beyond all reasonable doubt.


http://english.ruvr.ru/2010/12/31/38440096.html